Ruth Westfall died more than 30 years ago.  She was a good neighbor, beloved mother, and happy grandmother.  She and her husband lived down the road from me when I was seven, and I remember her as a kindly and generous neighbor.   

I was in my forties when she passed. At that time, all of us who knew her conjured a vignette or two—along with some thanksgivings for her life. Of course, her close family felt the deeper grief. But because Ruth had lived a long and upright life, even those most involved with her soon felt their grief subsiding, and they were able to get on with their day to day lives.  In other words, the grieving over Ruth’s death abated over the decades becoming entirely healed over. 

Until this past Wednesday night—when the gates of sorrow—over Ruth’s passing—burst forth again unexpectedly, plunging Isobel Smith Long, a bright five-year old, into a fit of uncontrollable weeping.  This makes no sense, of course, unless I tell you the story that goes with it.

Izzy is my granddaughter.  Her parents were on a much-needed get-away this past week, and I volunteered to take a shift caring for her and her one-year-old sister, Maeve.  Mine was the first shift—Wednesday through Friday.  (Aunt Mindy drew the next one—Friday through Tuesday.) And I’ll take shift three this Tuesday and Wednesday.  Grandma Sharon is assisting those of us on frontline duty--the entire time--except she gets to go home each night--and during most of the day. 

The first night, baby Maeve went to sleep almost instantly--no problem. Grandma Sharon went home, and it was just Izzy and me.  

Perhaps you too know a five-year-old with a complex go-to-bed ritual. And perhaps your particular five-year-old is like Izzy, capable of stretching that ritual into a two or three hour ordeal—if you don’t stop them. Get the picture? It is now one on one: Izzy vs. Grandpa.  Will it take twenty minutes to get her to close her eyes? Or will she manage to string Grandpa out for two hours or more?

Her parents left me a detailed list of everything Izzy usually did just prior to bedtime.  It was sort of a prescription for getting her to sleep:  brush teeth, floss, fill water bottle, set color of alarm clock, read three books, tell three jokes, tell her three stories from my personal life, get stuffed animals arranged, spray bed with sleep spray, wish her a good night with six different idioms, kiss her—and Hedwig—her stuffed owl, give each of them a forehead smooch, and remind her that I would check on her before I went to bed myself. I followed the prescription—to the letter. Twenty minutes.

As I was ready to walk out the door, Izzy sniffled, raised her voice two octaves, and pathetically informed me that this was her first time ever to be alone without her parents.  In other words, game on.

And so I sat back down on her bed and gave her a hug.  I agreed with her that the circumstances were different on this particular night, and that she and I would make up our own rules—as long as she realized that tonight's rules only worked with me, and no one else.  I told her that I would tell her a story about why I was changing the rules, and after that story, I would sit with her and read until she fell asleep.  She agreed with that.  Here is the (almost) verbatim story of why I changed the rules for her:

"When I was six—close to your age, my parents left for the night.  They went to the hospital because my mom was going to have a baby—my baby brother it turned out.  I was already in bed when I heard them leave, and I started to cry.  But it turned out, my mother cared about me very much and had arranged for a very kind woman to stay at the house with me.  When that kind woman heard me crying, she immediately came in my bedroom, sat on my bed, hugged me, and stayed in my room until I fell asleep. Because she was so kind and gentle, I decided that someday, if I was ever with a child who was afraid, I would be kind and gentle too.  So, that is why I gave you a hug and will stay here until you fall asleep.

Izzy:  What was her name?

Me:  Ruth Westfall.

Izzy:  Is she still alive?

Me:  No.

Momentary pause

Izzy:  (crescendo of sounds—wailing, sobbing, blubbering, weeping)

Me:  (trying to think)

Izzy: (blubbering) Why did she have to die?

Me:  But Izzy, if Ruth hadn’t died, she’d be 120 years old.  She wants to be dead.

Izzy: (trying not to be consoled, but running out of gas because she didn't know enough about Ruth to keep the mourning going)

Me:  (eventually)  Okay Izzy, it’s okay.  (hugs)  Now, let me cheer you up with another book.  But this book is my book, not one of yours, since your books didn’t work. 

Izzy:  (figuring this was the best deal she was going to get out of me)  Okay

Me:  Tonight’s reading is from Don Quixote, chapter 51.  (by the fourth page, perhaps due to the musical quality of my voice, my reassuring presence, and her having no idea how to connect emotionally with what I was reading—she was asleep.)

The next night we followed a similar routine--minus the grieving over Ruth. When it came to the end--time for me to read "my" book aloud, Izzy asked if I would read one of hers instead, that my books were too boring. I told her that her books were too interesting, and she wouldn't be able to close her eyes and go to sleep. (I knew better than to let myself lose that argument!) And so the second night, I read a chapter from a Pablo Picasso biography--written by a critic who was complaining about the personality cult that had developed around the famous artist. It was so boring that Izzy was asleep by the second paragraph--and I was having trouble staying awake after the fourth.

A time to weep.  A time to laugh.  Ecclesiastes 3:4. And a little child shall lead them.  Isaiah 11:6.

Weeping is the natural response to pain, physical and emotional.  Too often, however, we get “too big” to weep.  For example, I only saw my dad weep once.  He had been taught that boys don’t cry.  And my mom kept her weeping in check—mostly. When she did cry, she never put on a performance.  Her tears would ooze quietly out of her eyes, and you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t look directly at her.  She didn’t like to cry--partly because when she got mad, she would involuntarily cry--which just made her madder—which made her cry more, and on and on.  

And let's face it, adults don’t like to hear kids cry.  Their weeping is inconvenient, disruptive, guilt-producing. So, we try to curb their grief--quickly as we can.  

But...crying is a healthy way of processing grief.  And if we get persuaded that sobbing is off limits, that natural sadness we feel in the presence of physical and emotional pain can get rerouted into some rather unhealthy places.  And that was the picture this past week, an underlying dynamic between Izzy and myself. If you were spying in on us, you would have noticed how healthy she was, and how unhealthy I looked.  Izzy had done just the right amount of crying lately--I had been doing too little.

A quick primer here on pain:  Physical pain is detected throughout our bodies by a network of sensory nerves.  If I cut my finger, the nerves in that location send a message to my brain, letting me know that the finger needs adjustment—or attention. There is one part of the brain that processes all those “pain” messages:  the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex.  (This will not appear on a quiz later.)    

This area of the brain also happens to be the receptacle for our experiences of emotional pain as well. In other words, all human pain congregates in the same brain location—and coagulates there unless we process it.  Weeping is one of the most effective ways to keep our painful experiences from balling up on us.  There is indeed a time to weep.  

Grandpa has been needing to weep as much as Izzy.  And why not?  He woke up the day before heading to Izzy’s house and needed crutches to get around—and continued to need them all week.  Something about sacroiliitis—or piriformis syndrome.  It was physically painful, somewhere between 7-9 on a scale of 10.  This was on top of the physical exhaustion and stomach flu I had last week.

There has also been some emotional pain for me lately--due to loss, stress, and physical discomfort. Yet, unlike Izzy, I never cried.  Our Spain trip was stressful, despite it being wonderful.  But stress and anxiety are both forms of pain—anticipatory pain.  News of war in the Near East was painful for me to hear—and so I processed it intellectually (see last week’s Sunday Post) rather than emotionally.  My mom has been in and out of the hospital, and I’ve felt sadness and worry over that.  This past week, we heard of 51 more churches in our conference disaffiliating, and my sorrow expanded.  I could go on with this list.  (And so could each of you!)  But I did not cry.  

This latest trouble that led to crutches is partially emotionally based.  That section of the brain that collects all our pain—it’s not a very good organizer.  It often can’t remember the origin of a pain—physical or emotional—and it sends “corrective” instructions throughout the body and mind, willy nilly sometimes. It has our body “feeling” emotional pain and our mind twisted around trying to rationalize physical pain.  If we don’t have a good habits, rituals, and releases for process ALL our pain, life just gets more complicated for us—and more difficult.

Yesterday, the doctor started medicating me.  A shot of ketorolac in the hip, instructions to rest, heavy doses of naproxen, Tylenol Arthritis pills, a week on Prednisone, and Tizanidine at night to relax muscles.  My mind is drug addled as I write this today.  But I feel better and have put the crutches back in the garage.

And this morning I wept.  Finally.  After Jie had gone to church, I watched the online service at the Holy Wisdom Monastery—in a sense, my home church now for more than 3 decades.  I saw my old friends worshipping there this morning, Joanne, Mary David, Lynn.  It was All Saints/Souls Day.  And the liturgy invited me to both grieve and rejoice, naming all the loved one’s I’ve lost through the years.  The music pried open my heart and soul. Other losses and pains started to surface in my consciousness. Then the sermon, low key and thoughtful, nudged me away from counting my losses—to counting the ways I have been blessed.  Alone in my sunroom, uninhibited, I finally wept.   

Now, having worshipped—and lamented properly—and been given an opportunity to give thanks--I am writing to you.  I laughed off an on through the week at the things Izzy said and did.  She is quite the performer.  But now that I have also wept--my laughter is all the richer.  

Jesus wept.  There is a time for weeping.  Then there is a time for laughter.  And a little child shall lead them.  There are many places in our own lives for this wisdom. I’m starting to catch on.  Hope you are too.