Tears

I think what it boils down to is that I am incapable of coping with the enormity of life.

So I either live in denial of the incomprehensible fragility and finality of it all, forcing myself to live in oblivion and be numb.

Or I find myself in a period of time, like the past few weeks, when I am so overcome by moments of beauty, sadness, terror, joy, and love that I feel completely raw and I cry. I cry every day, multiple times a day, over big things and small things. For short spurts of just a few tears or for prolonged periods of gentle weeping or blubbering sobs.

I'm trying to look back and pinpoint what set off this latest period of ceaseless tears. I think it might have been reading The Book Thief. I think I started crying then and haven't stopped since.

Sometimes I cry because I'm moved by beauty and sweetness, like when Keri Russell sings the pie song to her baby in Waitress. But then those tears morph into those of grief and anger at the senselessness of it all when thinking about how the woman who wrote that song, whose actual daughter played the little girl in the movie, got murdered. And those tears all mix together while I feel how beautiful and ugly the world can be at the same time.

Really, these days I'll cry over anything. I cried over Planet Earth and the Battle of the Bulge. I cried yesterday in our director's office while talking about how much I love my boss. She then teared up, because she loves her, too. Tears are so contagious. They're like yawns that way, or laughs.

Yesterday I also cried when my mom sent an e-mail to her four children after attending the funeral of a guy my older brother's age who had a stroke right after his honeymoon. "I know that there is a message to reflect upon in all that happens to us in this life," she wrote. "Today for me--and I pass it on to you who are dearest to me--is that life is precious. Every day, every minute is too precious to waste on anything that does not have meaning or is not life-giving. Let none of us put mindless TV, trash movies, resentment, worry, envy, regret, money--above being with those you love and those who love you. Dearest ones of my life, I prayed today that you will reflect on the suddenness of his death, that such reflection will call you in a new way to live your life to the fullest--loving others, serving others, spreading God's love and kindness within you to all whom you meet, seeing the preciousness in yourself, each other, your special friends, living, not in a morbid way, but with an adventurous, energetic spirit--each day as if it were your last.....because it just might be. Some of his last words to his wife: 'Don't worry, honey. God will take care of us.' May you grow in trust of this, too. May that beautiful young man rest in peace ... and may you, my precious children, live in peace and joy in all that you do."

The tears over that e-mail will be unending, probably, partly because I have a mom who would send an e-mail that loving and profound and because I feel what she was feeling -- being seized with that dread, that panic that we're not appreciating every moment and that it can all end so suddenly. I feel that on a regular basis, and it's an awful feeling, and I cried because I knew she was feeling it, too. I feel like I've always felt that way, that sense of urgency about the preciousness of life, but it used to be a much more positive thing. It used to feel like a blessing, a gift, even a joy. But lately it's felt like a burden, like a goddamn albatross, and I wonder if that's just part of getting older. Or part of losing belief in God and in heaven and that we'll never be apart from those we love even in death. I wish I could still believe that. I think I was much less afraid.

Today's crying jag started when cleaning out a closet. I'm doing some rearranging and organizing and I opened one of my grandmother's old journals. She had one for every year for about 12 years or so, late in her life. Maybe she had more, I don't know. But there's a week on each page and entries for each day of they week. Her handwriting is horrendous; she was raised when you were taught to write right-handed even if you weren't, and she wasn't, and it shows. I think maybe the scratchy scrawl adds to the melancholy of her prose. But her entries are so spare and so simple and they cause my heart to clench in despair. I know she wanted me to have them; she told my mom, and my mom told me, years ago. My grandmother loved each of us the most on varying days; I guess that day it was me. So I am glad to have them but also feel the weight of her loneliness and sadness with every word I read and I can never read long before I have to close them and cry a hundred tears. And I wonder if I should scan parts of them and share them with other relatives, like her children, when she wrote something kind or wonderful about them, but I worry that it will become a whole possessive mess because I have them and that reading them in full will make them dissolve in pain. They are so hard for me to handle, and I am her granddaughter. I don't know if it would be a gift or a cruelty to share the journals with them. Today I happened to be on the phone with my friend who knew and really liked my grandmother when the boo-hooing wave commenced, and she said something like, "Well, if you believe that we all carry pieces of each other inside ourselves," since her daughter has my grandmother's name as her middle name, "then she carries part of her inside." And that just made me start bawling, because, well. That's really it, isn't it?

Meanwhile, I decided the music I had to listen to while doing all of this closet cleaning and journal reading and crying was the Broadway soundtrack to The Lion King, and I don't care what anyone says about the Disneyfication of Broadway, this soundtrack is a thing of beauty. And it opens, "From the day we arrive on this planet, and, blinking, step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done." And I thought, yes. "There is far too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found." And I thought, yes. There is far too much to take in here. And maybe that is why I am crying every day. And then, "It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love. Till we find our place, on the path unwinding ..." And yes, it's from a Disney show and I think it might have been written by Elton John and I realize it comes from a cartoon, but this song kills me. The Broadway recording, it is stunning. I feel like all my heart has been doing lately is blinking into the sun and trying to take it all in. And THEN the song "He Lives in You" came on, and I thought about what my friend said about my grandmother living on in her little baby, my godchild. And that also is truly a beautiful song, I am telling you.

I might need to rethink tonight's plan to watch Downfall and watch something else instead. Something with singing and dancing. Like Grease 2 or Waiting for Guffman.

And hi, I'm crying some more, typing this right now, big shocker. And I am grappling with accepting that surely it must be better to feel everything than feel nothing.

It's not like I am going through each day sad or depressed. It's not that way at all. It's just that as I told my boyfriend tonight, I feel like lately I just have an overflowing heart. And it's overflowing and exploding so much that it's always close to the surface and the tears are so accessible and I can't help it, and before I know it, they just come, and my heart is running down my cheeks, trying to understand life and death and the world, trying to get free.