Not Crying Causes Headaches

This weekend I went to a very sad funeral. Sadder than most I've attended because it was a funeral of a very young mother that had not only a husband that loved her, but two very young children. I didn't know her well but I found it so hard to control my emotion as I sat in the church looking at pictures of how great her life looked when she was alive. What a huge loss. Unimaginable.

But I felt like such a fraud having these uncontrollable tears running down my face. This was really not MY grief. Like I said, I really barely knew this person. Her husband was a close Jr. High School and High School friend of my husband. I had only met her a few times. But I just felt so sorry and sad for her family. And so sad for the thought of her knowing her time was cut so short with the people she loved. What that must have been like for her...

If you've ever been to a movie that was unbearably sad and you were trying so hard NOT to cry: That's how I felt. My chest felt heavy and my head hurt. I just kept thinking, "I'll cry about this later, when I get home, and I'm by myself. NOT NOW" If her family and close friends were able to keep it together, I certainly should be able to! But if at that moment I could've really cut loose with the cry I needed at that moment, it would've been primal. It instead was contained to just the tears running silently down my face.

So because of trying to contain that emotion, I felt head-achey and a little sick all day. And no, I didn't go home and have the good cry I had planned on. In fact, we went to a birthday party for my 90-year-old granny-in-law and crying then wouldn't have been okay either. Yeah- no, not at all.

I am thankful for human compassion. That church was full of people feeling just as I did. When we see someone else suffering, it really does become our grief too. I know all of us that were there have that family in our thoughts. I think we probably all have headaches today...