Once I cried for 8 years

A couple of weeks ago my sister sent me a link that sends you a daily list of free books for Kindle or IPad. This is the coolest thing for two reasons. How can you not love "free" and for someone like me who reads daily, a never ending supply of new books is like Christmas everyday. Each night I look through the list and download the books that catch my interest. The problem is, most of them catch my interest.

Then there is this: When I was a kid we lived in a small town in southwest MN. It was a good place to be a kid. We knew all of our neighbors and we did not know what it was like to not feel safe. The town library was about 7 blocks from home. In the summertime some days my sister and I made the trip there and back twice a day. We were voracious readers and probably mildly annoying to the library staff although I don't remember ever feeling unwelcome. We spent summers lost in the world of "Nancy Drew" and the adventure series by an English author "Enid Blyton". It was when I read Florence Nightingale and decided that I must someday become a nurse.The books were free and unlimited. If you checked something out and didn't like it, no worries, there were thousands more to pick from. It was the beginning of losing myself in a world written by someone else. Imagining myself in places I never had been or even knew about. It was the start of knowing that everything I ever wondered about could be answered in a book.I just needed to look until I found it.

In 1990 I landed a job at our local school. When the Media Aide position opened up, I applied and got it. I started that job as the aide to two full-time librarians when I left in 2005 it was just me.In that 15 years it was my dream job. I learned how libraries worked, that without organization there would be chaos. I took over the ordering of magazines and books for a K-12 school and I took the responsibility very seriously. I stopped reading in my age category and started reading in theirs. It was book reviews, Caldecott winners, Newbery winners and magazines marketed for that age group. It was the budget and spending of money that could make or break a child's lifetime love of reading. We are a rural community and access to public libraries was not what I enjoyed as a child. All of the students in this school would have had to be driven to the public library and many of them didn't know what it was when I asked if they had ever been there. I was not a book snob. I told those kids and my own to read anything that caught their attention. I didn't care if it was books, magazines, owners manuals or the back of cereal boxes. Just read. Open your mind, take it in, form an opinion. Learn. I told them and believed it that everything has an answer if you just look long enough. I was wrong.

This is what I know:When Mike died I stopped reading, everything. My mind was blank. Empty. I no longer cared about living vicariously through books, there weren't any stories of places I wanted to go or things I wanted to do. Weeks passed and the only thing I read was this "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love." Washington Irving. I made copies and taped this message everywhere.I read it hundreds of times everyday. It was the validation I needed to get me through everyday. Washington Irving wrote the words that allowed me to believe.

When I began to read again I became relentless. I was scared I had waited too long. The answers were out there and I had wasted precious time...blank. I went straight to the public library and checked every single book out that they had on grief. I didn't stop there, I went into the two adjoining counties and did the same thing. I read deep into every night. I became a Barnes and Noble regular. I spent hours in the "self-help" isle reading through passages and chapters in any book that I thought might have the answer. When the words I read became too heavy, when I was scared I might never find "the book", I would lean against the shelving and gulp in air, crying sacred tears. I bought books, I borrowed books, titles like "The Worst Loss", "Beyond Knowing". "The Grieving Garden", "A Group I Never Wanted To Join", "Companion Through The Darkness" and "The Shack". I read all the literature the funeral home had given me, I read the police report, the coroners report and the autopsy report, over and over and over. I poured over grief sites on the Internet. I read blog postings and hovered outside chat rooms. Every book I read that I couldn't find the answer in was one day further Mike was away from me. I wasn't looking for where Mike went, although really..I was. I wasn't looking for someone to tell me how to do this...but that was there too. What I was really looking for was someone to tell me how to fix this. How to bring Mike back.

The world of grief literature is large, but not large enough. Every book ever written about the subject is one person's thoughts or perhaps one persons research. The old standard of stages of grief may be the most damaging of any idea ever. It tries to compartmentalize the inner soul. It's a construction manual for feelings that will never be locked in to any time frame. The commonality of grief is this....you are grieving. Everything else is up for grabs.

I purchased around 20 books. I borrowed possible 50 more. One year ago I was given a book title from a friend. The book is "Tear Soup" by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck Deklyen. In roughly 100 pages in a format written for children, it is the message that finally got through.  Buy this book. Own this book. Read this book for yourself and your children. The day will come when you will all make "Tear Soup". Be ready.

I no longer believe I can "fix" this. The acknowledgement of that nearly destroyed me. I thought the answers I needed were out there, and they were, once I realized I was trying to re-write the end of a story already written. 

It took nearly six years and thousands of pages and it boiled down to words that I read in the first 2 months. The author is Melody Beattie, the title of the book is "The Grief Club". On page 24 she says when speaking of her Son's death. "Once I cried for eight years."

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power." Washington Irving.

till next time