I would give my loved ones all of my tears but I cannot weep.

I would cry.
I want to.
I feel the ache,
but I can't.
My love lost his sister. No one saw it coming.
My mind froze. I shook to my core.
But I could not weep.
I stood with him at her funeral.
As he tried to be brave,
A youthful bravado he has long outgrown.
But I could not cry
This was not a formal funeral of restrained mourning, and rehearsed tributes.
This a cauldron of bubbling, frothing greif,
Vibrating anguish that drowned from the first moment.
Yet I could not weep.
My eyes saw her inconsolable father,
a young widower, who would face his bereavment alone.
a proud man shattered.
I could not cry.
I saw her sisters, huddled in a quivvering lot.
Faces swollen. contorted. Eyes raining torrents. Bodies heaving violently. Voices in choked wails muffled in each others sodden shoulders.
My heart reached out. I yearned to run to them, my family.
To embrace them.
But I was ashamed.
How dare I approach them dry eyed.
Yet I could not cry.
I dared not look upon her children.
Four fresh orphans.
The oldest on the cusp of womanhood,
berift of her guiding light.
The youngest too young to understand
the force that has shattered her family.
My mind cannot grasp it.
The soul demands tears.
I yearn to oblige.
But I cannot weep.
And then I heard a sound
that will haunt me for weeks.
Her youngest brother.
A grown man, a father, proud, strong.
He rises to speak.
I recall not a word that he said.
Only the gutteral sound of a weeping so wrenching
I have never heard its equal from man or woman.
His piercing, quaking stattico sobs shook the soul,
Reverberating through the speakers,
tearing at the heart like claws.
His breaths were jagged, sharp, a liquid serrated blade.
His flowing tears,
Which he shut eyes could do nothing to stem,
spoke the words lost to his cries.
His sister is with their mother, he finally choked.
The men all break down. Tissues in ever hand.
But I could not cry.

Why?
I cry in frustration when I loose my necklace.
My tears come unbidden when my love and I quarrel.
When I feel wronged?
Why can I cry only selfish petty tears?
Why can I only use so beautiful a womans gift
In so wasteful a manner?

My best friend since chilhood confides her lonliness.
She has never found love, she longs for children, she fears a barren future.
I hold her close.
But I cannot cry.
Even for her?
I amb disgusted.
Even for she who saved me from isolation, from fear
From grief, from abuse?
Can I muster no tear for her suffering?
Even for her my eyes answer.
My throat is tight. My heart constricts.
My babies the cherubic epitome of her dreams
So out of reach.
I cannot cry.

My beloved sister in law,
my wise confidant,
my dear friend.
A mother of 8,
She still fills her room with teddy bears.
bedridden from a car accident.
Robbed by dizziness of even the most mundane delights
She cannot read. Walk. Play with her children.
She is isolated, fearful, frustrated.
She cries to me on the phone.
I tell her she is loved.
I miss her companionship so deeply it aches.
I want to validate her tears with my own,
So she may feel less alone.
To feel her pain, weep it with her
But I cannot cry.

I have sat with my greif, tried to let it take its course,
But it will not oblige me.
I cannot weep.

I yearn so deeply to give my tears for my loved ones.
To add my sobbing voice to their chorus,
To tell them what words are so inadequate to say

I want to weep unselfishly, for once,
please G-od,
for others.
To bathe my face and my soul with tears of empathy.
To shake my walls with sobs of prayer.
But alas.
To my great regret. My inner shame.
I cannot cry.