My grandfather once tried to teach me not to cry.
“Doie”, using his childhood nickname for me, “when you are dead and gone, you are just that. Dead and gone. Crying won’t bring you back so don’t cry when I’m gone.”
Of course, I cried when he was gone. And he was right. Crying did not raise him from the dead, nor did it further cement him in my mind.
All crying did was make my eyes burn until I was all cried out. Or maybe I was just so dehydrated, my body found it to be physically impossible to cry any more.
Either way, I didn’t really cry for six weeks even though I needed to cry. Sometimes a single sob would escape my mouth but I could not sustain it. There were no more tears to give.
I couldn’t cry if my life depended on it. I wanted to cry, I just couldn’t remember how to do it.
I didn’t cry when I read his obituary in the local newspaper and saw my name on the list of his survivors. And I didn’t feel like I was surviving.
I didn’t cry when my fingers touched the laminated prayer card I kept in my purse that my mother gave me before the memorial service.
I didn’t cry when we divided his belongings amongst us, looking like vultures but feeling like the desperate who needed to cling to a memory.
Instead, I finally cried in a mall food court like a raving lunatic on a beautiful , sunny Saturday afternoon. I cried so hard, I freaked out a little boy in a Little League uniform at the table next to me. He, in turn, burst into tears and spilled his chocolate milk all over himself.
No one else seemed to notice. No one else seemed to care.
He still didn’t come back even though my mouth tasted like a peculiar form of grief I had not discovered earlier.
Time had moved forward as time often does. While physically, I moved forward, emotionally, I stopped on February 19th. Since then, I merely went through the motions. It was all just make believe.
Sitting in a consumer wasteland, the truth of the matter was realized.
Cassandra Jowett said...
1Some of my family, including my mom, said that to me when they were sick and dying. And some family who were left behind told me, as I cried, that crying doesn’t accomplish anything, so I shouldn’t do it.
Well, I’m a crier. I can cry at the drop of a hat. I’m not depressed, and it’s usually about big things like missing my mom, who died when I was 18.
Sometimes we just have to cry and it doesn’t have to mean anything or accomplish anything. For me, it means I’m being honest with myself. Whether it’s just tears welling up in my eyes or a full-on fetal position bawl session.
Eventually, you will start moving forward again. I don’t know how long it will take or how you will know, but one day you’ll just realize you’re back in the thick of things and although you still miss him, you know it’s better for you, and for his memory, that you keep on trucking.
04/27/09 9:17 AM | Comment Link
Carmella Tress said...
2…beautiful way of describing the heartbreaking reality you are facing right now. Like many who love you, I wish there was something I could do but know that there is not.
04/27/09 10:00 AM | Comment Link
charlotte said...
3I find I cry most effectively in public anymore. Seems I can’t help anyone when I’m sitting at home in the middle of a moat of snotty kleenex.
04/27/09 10:19 PM | Comment Link
Susan Pogorzelski said...
4Dorie: I can’t tell you how much this post moved me. I think that grief hits us all in different ways, at different times, and certainly, in different places. I think that when loss is unexpected — or maybe just not wanting to be faced — it takes awhile to maybe sink in, makes it difficult to face the reality of the situation because we don’t want it to be a reality…not just yet.
Personally, I tend to bottle up my emotions. I think I kind of convince myself that I’m trying to be strong for other people, for my family members, but, really, I think it might be a way of trying to escape those feelings for myself, hoping that they will go away. But they don’t really ever go away because grief is something that has to be felt, acknowledged. And I’ve kind of learned that that’s ok — that’s how you heal.
I don’t really know if I’m just rambling or if I’m making any sense. Really, I want you to know how much I appreciate this post and how I wish you all the comfort.
04/28/09 9:34 AM | Comment Link