Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-05-28- 1:08 a.m.

If You Don't Cry... (Part III)

(Before reading, please read Parts One and Two.)
“Why do the men cry? Because of fights and feats and marathon preferment, because they want their mothers, because they are blind in time, because of all the hard-ons they have to whistle up out of the thin blue yonder, because of all that men have done. Because they can’t be happy or sad anymore – only smashed or nuts. And because they don’t know how to do it while they’re awake.”
- Martin Amis
Before we go out, Wee and I have endless cycles of the same argument. Wee certainly is what one would call fashion impaired, but while that doesn’t bother me as a rule, he has a tendency in the summer to wear flip-flops and surgical scrub pants. Out. In public. To restaurants and such. This bothers me to no end, and we argue about it. His point is that he chose a sort of work for himself that has no dress code, that he doesn’t feel that he needs to impress anybody, and that he shouldn’t have to get dressed up just to go to the diner or the movies with his best friend. I counter with a remnant of my more southern upbringing; that appearance, specifically one that is presentable, is a sign of respect to his companion, and the people who should happen to interact with us. He doesn’t get why I care what the waitress at E.J.’s Luncheonette thinks of us, and I can’t seem to come up with any better reason that to say, “Because it matters.”
Appearances matter. Perhaps our modern clichés about beauty only being skin deep and such are true, but appearances are about a great deal more than simply aesthetics. Nothing is going to make me any more beautiful than I am, but if I put on a nice, ironed shirt and slacks and a newly shined pair of shoes before I go out on a first date, it means something to the girl. It may translate to “better looking” in her mind, but what I’m really telling her is that she was worth the effort. I wanted to look my best for her. And that says a lot.
I don’t work in a dressy profession. The truth is that if I show up to work not wearing shorts, or in shoes that can’t be purchased at Foot Locker, I’m the dressy one. But even knowing this, I’d never show up for a job interview unshaven, or wearing a baseball cap. I’m not going to wear a jacket and tie to a job interview either; I don’t want anyone to think I believe that my work is more serious than it is, but the point is that I don’t wish to appear frivolous. Circumstances like that, job interviews and first dates, those are moments when people are sizing you up, and having a nice shirt is as important as having a nice resume.
Of course, we are all being sized up far more often than that. We are being sized up by our girlfriends and boyfriends, to decide if we are worth another week or month or ten years of commitment. We are being sized up by our friends, to insure that we are trustworthy and dependable and still fun to be with. We are being sized up by our parents, to decide if we’ve got our act together enough that they can stop worrying that they will get a three a.m. phone call from the police or the hospital. And I suppose it shouldn’t have come to a shock to me that when we are in pain, in grief, in mourning, we are sized up by those who share it as well.
My other grandfather, my mother’s father, was the finest man I have ever known. He is my ideal, my model for the sort of person I would like to grow up to be. He died when I was eighteen years old, in the summer of 1995, sixteen days after I returned from Israel. Two years earlier, he had endured a spat of heath problems, including a quadruple heart bypass and stomach cancer, but was in good health when I left. That winter, however, he was diagnosed with cancer in his bones and liver, which the doctors considered terminal. I offered many times to him, to my grandmother, to my parents to return home, but everyone insisted that I stay, most especially my grandfather. Every time his health took a negative turn, I would get the call from my mother and begin to pack my bags, but every time he pulled through it. When I came home, he was still living at home, albeit under a great deal of care. Two days after I returned I flew up to Buffalo and stayed there for ten days with him, sitting and talking and playing chess. Four days after I went back to Washington, he had died.
To this day, my mom and grandmother maintain that he held on as long as he did out of sheer will, to stay alive until I came home on my own accord. And that it wasn’t until I had come, visited, and left that he was ready to let go.
I hated losing my grandfather. It was terrible. I loved him so, and I still do. It was the first time I had lost someone close to me, because when my first grandfather passed away I was too young to really understand what it meant, much less to truly know him. I remember a lot about his funeral. I remember how a man in his forties, a man a decade younger than my own father, spoke at the funeral. He spoke of how he first graduated from college, and got a job as a clerk in my grandfather’s office. He spoke of how fortunate he was to have his first boss be my grandfather, and what a fine man he had been to know. He spoke of how for the next two decades, though both of them had gone on to other jobs, he would call my grandfather when he needed advice or help. I was so proud of my grandfather that day. And I realized for the first time how awful it would be that I would never get to see him again.
But I didn’t cry. Not even when we put him in the ground, and I had to stand over the casket and pour earth over him. I wanted to cry, and I felt it throughout my body, but tears never came.
I didn’t think about that very much. I didn’t believe in an afterlife then, or that my grandfather was somewhere watching me, but I figured that if he did, then he could see into my heart and that he would understand. And it never occurred to me that it mattered to anyone else.
But of course, it mattered a great deal to my mother.
Shortly before I was to leave for college, I was in the laundry room of my parents’ house, having an argument with my mother while we folded clothes from the dryer that I was to take with me. I don’t know what the argument was about in the beginning, but it ended up with my mother accusing me of not caring about anyone else but myself. She said that I didn’t care about her, or my father, or my brother. And then she broke down in tears, with her breathe heaving, and she screamed at me, “You couldn’t even cry at your own grandpa’s funeral. You heartless fuck!”
My mother is not a woman given to casual swearing.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know how to defend or explain myself, or even if I should. I knew she was wrong. I knew I cared a great deal, and that my heart broke when my grandfather died. I could remember, and I still can, the churning ache I felt inside that day. I suddenly realized that I had been judged, and that my love of my grandfather had been found lacking. It wounded my mother terribly; she loved her father so much and felt that I didn’t share her love.
I had always known that there were certain rules for funerals. You wear black, or failing that, you certainly don’t wear anything bright or cheerful. You don’t tell jokes, or laugh, or whisper to your neighbor during the eulogy. If you can’t manage to mourn, you are expected to at the least show respect. I didn’t have any problems in that area; I was mourning plenty. I had expected that I would cry. I didn’t realize that other people were expecting me to.
Until that day, crying was something that I thought I had been trying not to do. After, I began to wonder if crying was something I was no longer able to do.

(Continue to Part IV.)

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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