A Tear and a Smile

The smell of split pea soup brewing on the stove-top is thick and heavy in the air, causing my empty stomach to rumble. The three youngest Johnson children are nesting cozily in their beds. Thank God. The eldest child is given the five minute warning that school is about to begin; an audible groan is heard from his location on the couch where he is leafing through a Star Wars book. The microwave with its mechanical, high pitched, annoying beep indicates that my fourth cup of coffee for the day is hot and ready for creamer and Splenda. My husband is working late again tonight. Sigh. For all appearances, our lives have shifted back to normal. Except that a row of sympathy cards, which you all have so graciously sent, adorn the piano in our living room; that my father's wedding band swings loosely around the ring finger of my right hand; that his watch, still stained with the Burt's Bees' lotion we had given him for his birthday and rubbed on his arms as he lay dying, is homeless on my kitchen counter. I strain in my memory to hear his voice as he answers the phone; as he walks through my doorway. I long to feel the rough of his unshaven cheek against my face as I lean in for a kiss. His absence is so profound; so irrevocable.

Today, two weeks after my father died, I was determined to get us out of the house that for me had begun to take on a suffocating quality. And so in the helter skelter so characteristic of our family, mother and children piled into our van, picked up some doughnuts to the delight of my sons and daughter, and drove to Arsenal Cemetery where my father's body is buried. With sugar crusted faces and sticky fingers clutching red carnations, and with a warning from "mean mom" to severely limit any and all raucous behavior on this hallowed ground, my children hurried out to locate the marker bearing their grandfather's name. Together the five of us knelt on the earth covering my father, dust accumulating on the black dress in which I have vested myself during this period of mourning, watching my daughter's hand squash the brown, cracked dirt. We sang "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" and the Paschal Troparian, "Christ is Risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!" We told Grandpa that we had picked up some sweet treats and how we wished he was with us to enjoy one more apple fritter. We laid our offerings of beauty like laurels crowning his head, prayed for all those newly departed lying in formation with my father, and climbed back into the van. "Good-bye Dad." "Good-bye Grandpa." We waved from the dirty windows. "I miss Grandpa." "We will see him next time?" Russell asked. "Some day baby. Some day." But for now, a tear and a smile.

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude. And I would not have the tears that sadness makes to flow from my every part turn into laughter. I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding of life's secrets and hidden things. A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and to be a symbol of my glorification to the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart; a smile to be a sign of my joy in existence. I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I lived weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the depths of my spirit, for I have seen those who are satisfied the most wretched of people. I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals and sleeps, embracing her longing. At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet the sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfillment. A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come together and are a cloud.
And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping to the fields and joins with the brooks and rivers to return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting. A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from the greater spirit to move in the world of matter and pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow and the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death and return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty - to God.

Kahil Gibran