'This is what we Japanese called the "onion life"- peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.'
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden.
Some days I just cry.
It's not anything in particular that sets it off, makes it worse. It's just the way it is, some days... some days I live through a veil of tears that I am unable to stop. Holding them in just means they release themselves in a symphony of hiccuped, breath drawing sobs, rather than a silent flowing river of silver pain.
"I'm not buying you another box of tissues," my mother jests gently. "Pull your socks up, calm down and get on with it."
I am getting on with it, I tell her. My socks are so high they suffocate me. As I speak to her phone, I am folding a load of washing fresh from the dryer, tears coursing my cheeks as I do so.
This is, I think, the way of those of us who are grieving deeply, keening over losing the loss of someone so close, be it a husband, baby, someone else who kisses your soul... you keep living, you keep doing things, shedding a thousand tears as you go.
The onion life, as they say. Stripping away a layer at a time, crying all the while... not financially, or with material possessions, as in the book it's quoted from. In this context it's layers rubbed off my poor, weary soul, exposing the flesh underneath all over again, before it's even begun to heal.
So, those of us who mourn as I do.... we cry as we go on with life. We sob as we fill out paperwork for mundane medical medical matters, we keen softly while we mop our floors. Tears run down our cheeks as we make rumpled beds. A river of pain and sadness and regrets wells on our cheeks as we take the meat from the freezer from dinner.
Why...? Because there is simply not enough time to cry, to mourn, to grieve and wallow. Life goes on far before we're ready, far before we've had time to process the damage that's been done, cry all the tears we need to.
A life punctuated by crying. It can't be like this forever... surely it's just the grief, washing itself away, over and over and over again.