Crying for Someone, No One, Nothing, Everything
May 19, 2009
By Suzanne Molino Singleton
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Why do we cry at a funeral of someone we didn’t know?
Seems the cheerless scene forces us to put on the brakes of life as we rise above the trivia, like an angel peering down from heaven.
We seem to metamorphose into “glimpse the entire picture” mode as we analyze our own mortality, the fragility of life, the injustices, and how much we are made to keep constantly on our toes.
We remember people we have liked and loved who have already passed over the years, especially the ones who tenderly touched us the deepest: parents, grandparents, parents of friends, in-laws, siblings, uncles, great aunts. We’ve buried acquaintances, schoolmates, neighbors, friends of our parents, and our own young friends who died before they were supposed to.
At each stop of sadness, we reflect. We contemplate. We examine. Under our figurative magnifying glass, we study the day, the week, the year, and if we think long enough, our entire life … as the world around the funeral procession keeps chattering.
The traffic light continues to change, the bank is open, and the dentist keeps drilling … each unaware of a family’s sorrow a few blocks away.
We reflect gloomily on the people we love now and have yet to lose. We imagine them at the moment thriving and breathing and eating and laughing with us. But we know the unstoppable outcome. Yet we hope.
We hope to clutch everyone as long as possible and strive to do the best we’re able to handle in these crazy, patchy relationships we call love so that when “our people” do become angels, we can honestly say, “There were no regrets.”
Why are we crying? For them, for us, for everyone who has lost and felt this sinking, helpless feeling called death.
In the next moment, we hear the happy news that she is expecting! Life feels cheerful again. Again like an angel peeking from heaven, we look at the hint of life in a womb, that new precious sweet life, replacing death simultaneously, and the perspective of the world changes to a beautiful place which welcomes such miracles into it.
Baltimorean Suzanne Molino Singleton is a freelance columnist here and on www.examiner.com and www.yesnetwork.com (Mrs. Singy: Married to Baseball), and is the creator of the weekly inspirational e-column SNIPPETS (www.snippetsinspiration.com). When not writing, she plays house with sports celeb Ken Singleton and their dependents.
