Gift
of Tears
“Tears
are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.”
Rita
Schiano
Do
tears come naturally to you? I know people who can cry over all sorts of
things. I must tell you that I envy them. Crying is hard for me. Instead of
crying in grief or sorrow, I cry over sweet or patriotic things. The innocence of
children singing, our military men and women being welcomed home by their
families, a choir singing the Ava Maria, the sweet helplessness of a new puppy—all
of these can turn me into a sodden mess. But, crying when I am sad or in grief
does not happen even when I want it to. I wonder whether you’re that way too.
Right
now, in America, we have lost 300,000 human beings to Covid-19. We have had no
collective grieving. We can’t gather because of the necessary precautions to
prevent spread of the virus. But here’s the deal—when this misery finally stops
and we have the spread under control, we need to do that. We need a national
day of mourning, and a ritual of grief. This pandemic is the most severe blow
to our country in my lifetime, the greatest loss of life in 100 years. We are
now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every single day. The statistics are too huge to wrap our heads around. And while we can’t simply fall apart, we do
need to mourn as a nation.
In many
countries, there are professional mourners. They lament and cry and wail. Just
as we Westerners don’t typically kiss in public, we also don’t cry in public.
We somehow got the message that crying is for sissies and that strong people do
not allow themselves to lose control. We think crying is a sign of weakness.
Nothing could be further from the truth. To be willing to cry in front of people,
we must be confident and strong enough to allow our true feelings to show.
Charles Dickens wrote, “Heaven knows we
need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of
earth, overlying our hard hearts.” There are times when crying is necessary
and cathartic. We need to cry. We should not hide our tears but allow them to
flow and let the families who have lost their loved ones know that we grieve with
and for them. There is a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery that is so
appropriate to this time. “It is such a secret place, the land of tears.”
This is a secret we should not keep—we are losing people everyday and we need
time to mourn. I wonder if you feel that way too.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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