Tracks of My Tears

I am an emotionally gifted person.

That’s a nice way of saying I cry a lot. (I’m fairly certain that title was bestowed on me in college by my choir director. He had plenty of reason to observe said crying, since he was always saying things about faith and family that made us all cry. Thanks, Dr. A.)

Anyway, it’s not my fault. I come from an entire family of “emotionally gifted” people. I often feel sorry for our less-gifted spouses…I imagine it’s sometimes difficult to be around us! And these next few weeks are going to be those kind of times…there’s more than a few tears flowing…

You would think after years of crying at the drop of a hat – over things both happy and sad – it would no longer really bother me to cry in front of people. You would be wrong. I hate it. I am not a pretty cry-er. Thirty seconds of tears, and my face gets all red and splotchy, my eyes get puffy, and I look horrible. Cry enough late at night and I may have difficulty getting my eyes open the next morning. And I will have wrinkles and dark circles that make me look 10 years older. And once I start crying, there’s almost no stopping the flow. Oh, it’s pathetic. And yet, it still takes next to nothing to get me started crying. (And let’s not even discuss how life was in my house when pregnancy hormones got me going!!)

I wish – often – that I could manage some sort of control over the tears. That there was some degree of sadness that didn’t involve tears. That I could have at least short conversations these days about my Granddad without the inevitable tears.

I’m assuming everyone currently reading my blog is also either family or a friend through facebook, so you already are aware of what is going on in our family. In case that’s not true, my granddad was just diagnosed on Monday with a very aggressive form of leukemia, and we’ve been told that he has just a few weeks left – less than that of being alert and aware. While we are confident of his final destination in Heaven, and equally confident that he will be more than relieved to be done with this world and rejoining Grandmother, it’s just plain hard to be left behind. (And, yes, tears are flowing now. I can’t even get through a blog post without crying. Gifted, I tell ya!)

I probably should have put a warning label on this post for my emotionally gifted family, huh? Sorry about that. At least I’m not crying alone. Well, except that I am, because none of you are reading it yet. Oh, nevermind.

I inherited a lot of really good things from my family, too…not just tears and the inability to cry pretty. My grandparents are/were pretty incredible people who passed on to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren a wonderful legacy of love and faith. I’ll probably write about it sometime soon, since my mind is taking lots of trips down memory lane these days. But it will have to be another day, since I’ve done enough crying for now.

It would be nice to go to bed tonight without that icepack on my eyes.