The first thing I noticed about him was the shapes his mouth made when he spoke. He spoke in a language I didn't understand, but his voice was gentle and flowed over the foreign words like a lullaby.

His hands made shapes, too; complementing the stories he was telling, drawing invisible pictures in the air. Those hands had told a thousand stories, I think, brought alive by the emotion in his eyes.

I held those hands as he told me his final story. I listened with my heart to what my ears could not understand. I let the shapes of him guide me through the words.