It's not enough to tell people you love them.

I thought I had "I love you" down. And then this.

First, I want to extend a brief but belated thanks for the gracious, wonderful comments and personal stories you’ve shared with me after The Quilt. (And lots of other posts too but that one was really personal to me.) I am truly honored that so many of you have have commented or contacted me to share stories about your own parents, grandparents, treasured keepsakes, love and loss, to help us all understand the ways in which we interlace objects, memories, and people.

Writers are often told “write for yourself” but while I write what I want to write, I’m not a journaler. I thrive off the community, the conversation, the shared vulnerability and humor, the way commenters become important writers themselves, sometimes spontaneously without thinking about it at all.

While my writing may kick off (or continue) a discussion or give words to something you’ve been thinking, when you respond with words that inform my own way of seeing the world it’s a cycle that’s endlessly thrilling and nourishing. Stories beget more stories, thinking begets more thinking, support begets more support. It helps me know that we’re together in all of this.

So when I say on each post that I couldn’t do what I am doing without you…I mean it. Thank you. - Liz

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Photo by Yana Nikulina on Unsplash

I am from a very “I Love You” kind of family and if you don’t have one yourself, it can be hard to understand. Maybe you’ve seen us in movies.

“I Love You” families kiss—sometimes on the lips—and we hug and we hold hands at graduations and weddings, we speak bluntly (“the turkey was a little dry this time”) and call each other out on our shit, and we always always pick up the phone when it rings. If you were to join us for Thanksgiving one year, you would think one thing which is, they really love each other.

Okay, you would think two things, the first of which is wow, they sure do talk over each other a lot and I don’t even know how they can be carrying on three entirely different conversations at the exact same time.

But the second would be, they really love each other.

We say I love you before we hang up the phone and during the hug goodbye at the end of a visit.

I say it to my friends. I say it to my kids every day without fail (whether or not they say it back). I text it. I leave it in voicemails.

(And yes, I still leave voicemails sometimes; I can even call without texting first because I’m GenX. Sue me. Oh wait, you won't sue me because no one even remembers we exist.)

I remember an old blogger friend writing that they didn’t have an “I love you” family and I still think about that often, and whether it’s changed over time.

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This weekend was a weekend of copious I love you’s with the memorial for my friend who died suddenly last week. It was soulful and funny, difficult and restorative, and of course through all of the exquisite speeches and remembrances I was thinking, as one does, about that strange fantasy of being at your own funeral.

That way, we would hear all the nice things people say about us—the things we never knew, memories we didn’t recall, some characterizations about ourselves we might even dispute but would concede in the end that okay, maybe I was a halfway decent person who was kinder or more generous or more inspiring than I gave myself credit for. Maybe I changed a life in a way I hadn't realized. Maybe I touched someone I haven’t even thought about for years.

It was clear through each remembrance that my friend was really truly loved—beloved—by so many different people, in all different capacities.

In closing, one of his dearest friends from college said something that that blew my mind.

He said (and Jeff, we don’t know each other so I hope it’s okay that I’m quoting your beautiful words here):

We tell people that we love them, but we don’t tell them why we love them.

Oof. Wow. Yes.

And here I was, thinking I had all the I love you stuff down.

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I’ve always lived by that adage that we should tell people we love them, because one day you might not get that chance.

I know that I tell my kids all the time what I love and admire about them, and I remind them that I will always love them, even when I don’t love every choice they make. It’s turned into this running joke between us about the “right” reasons to love or appreciate someone; for years, we have talked about how we don’t love people because of things they give us or do for us.

So ever since they were little, my kids have said things like “oh my God, you brought me a Caramel Frappe? I LOVE YOU MOM!” then they add, “…but not because of that.”

“Mom! I can really go see the show with my friend Saturday and you’ll pick me up at midnight? YOU ARE THE BEST MOM EVER… but not because of that.”

It’s our way of joking that we understand that love is not transactional, and that we can love something someone does for us, but that’s not the same as loving a person.

However this idea that loving a person is not the same as knowing why you love a person and being able to put it in words—I don’t know if I’ve ever really thought about that before.

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We can’t just tell people we love them, we need to tell people why we love them.

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What might it change if the people in our lives took a moment to tell us why we are loved? I’m thinking a lot.

What might we learn about ourselves? What might we learn about our purpose, or how to best spend our days? Would we have new ideas about the people who deserve our time and energy? Would we have a better sense of the direction we should be taking our lives? Would we think differently about the ways in which we create meaning and purpose for others?

I can’t stop thinking about how much it would mean for every one of us to know just a little more about how we matter, who we matter to, and above all, why we’re loved.

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