“It’s so %#&@ hard!”

I have to admit that in all my years taking baby funerals, this is the clearest expression of pain and brokenness that I have ever heard.

As I hugged the mom and she said these words I caught something of what she was feeling as she left her little baby’s coffin in the crematorium; leaving him for the last time.

It was raw and real; a cry of grief from the heart. And I agreed.

Of course, for all our sensitivities I have converted the word into symbols, buy you can take a guess at it if you want.

When I was growing up swearing was definitely out of order. If my Dad heard me, I would get a whack and remember not to do it again – at least in his hearing!

Now swearing seems ubiquitous; you only have to go to the supermarket to hear some mom or other effing and blinding at their kid.

So often the swear word becomes just another conjunction or adjective with no meaning. But here, in this mother’s case it was used absolutely correctly.

There are things so horrible, so painful, so unutterable, that the only word to capture the emotion is a profanity.

I use such profanities myself, in those situations where the normal lexicon lets me down. And it captures the emotions of a terrible and critical situation.

And then I went home, mind whirring with the event, to see my three-and-a-half year old granddaughter. We went out into the garden and she spotted two ladybirds sitting together on a leaf.

Immediately, her face broke into one of the hugest smiles I’ve ever seen.

She spontaneously clapped her hands and let out a word which sounded like “oooahhwheee”. Another immediate reaction, this time to something which she saw as beautiful and exciting.

Another emotional response where the normal dictionary doesn’t have the right words.

So next time I am facing a situation on one end of the emotional spectrum or the other, I might just go with my gut and use the words which come to mind.