It’s my problem, so I’ll cry if I want to (w/apologies to Lesley Gore)

You would cry too if it happened to you!

Do you cry?

• My father did. I can still remember his voice cracking when he told a story about something sad or nostalgic.

• I once worked with a colleague who told me he hated anti-depressants, because, he said, “I can’t cry anymore when I take them.” Crying is important to him.

Some men cry more than others, but I’ve decided it’s OK to cry, which is good, because I tear up easily, especially now that I’m a caregiver. Indeed, no one may cry more than the person thrust into this new role.

• I have a friend, also an Alzheimer’s caregiver, who said he regularly cries during worship. I do, too.

• Last week, Valerie Reed testified in her “Shared Story,” “I cry every day.” I do, too.

No new normal

It’s the grief that gets you. Everyone expects tears at a funeral or gravesite. The occasion of that grief is a sudden, final, one-time interruption.

But there’s seldom anything sudden about the deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s disease. The grief it inspires is an incessant drip, drip, drip of loss, smudging and shrinking reality to a shriveled remnant of what once was normal. Everyone in grief must come to terms with a new normal. But for those close to the Alzheimer’s patient, the changes never stop. Any new normal doesn’t last for long. Every week adjusting to the constant assault of another surprising loss threatens to overwhelm.

And so, I cry. And sometimes the crying surprises me, even though I’m experienced at puddling up. That happens when the tears are more like a flood than a trickle.

Reversed roles

I remember the day I opened a voicemail to hear the elegant West African accent of my friend Victoria.

“Joshua and I were just wondering how is Evelyn? Is she recovering from the surgery she had?”

That surgery had happened a year or more before that. I knew what Victoria was really asking. She had seen the changes in Evelyn, and she wanted to know what was wrong.

Victoria and Joshua had been our friends since Evelyn asked our church about finding them and their children a place to live years earlier. Both were students where Evelyn taught, here from Ghana studying for graduate degrees to equip them for service back in their homeland.

We posed with Victoria last November at her going-away reception, just before she returned to Ghana to join Joshua who was already serving there.

They were two in a sea of friends and acquaintances I hadn’t told about this change in our lives. But there was no need to keep the secret.

I called her from the car driving home from my weekly volunteering at the Healing Center. When I shared our news, she said, “Oh, I’m sure you are thinkin’ about all the things you wanted to do that now you can’t.” After my every response, she interrupted with, “And, Mark, how are you doing?” Victoria chuckled and admitted she had slipped into counselor mode. (She had just finished her Ph.D in psychology.)

The phone call ended with her admonition. “Mark, you must take care of yourself.” And at first the encouragement felt more like just one more new responsibility.

I clicked the “End” button and started crying as I drove. Soon I pulled into a Kroger parking lot, found a parking place, and gave in to heaving, gasping sobs.

Later I decided why her kindness had released such a torrent. First, each new conversation about our situation with someone who doesn’t know it is another confirmation of our changed reality. You can’t be in denial when you’re telling a friend the truth.

You can’t be in denial when you’re telling a friend the truth.

Second, in that moment Victoria and Joshua switched roles with me and Evelyn. For years we had been the givers: writing checks, encouraging others to give, praying, listening, advising. Victoria and Joshua were the needy African students seeking support. But in this conversation, I was doing all the receiving. I had nothing to give. The realization brought a tsunami of grief I hadn’t expected.

Crying in the bathroom

This wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last, time I’d find somewhere to cry alone. Several months later I decided Evelyn and I shouldn’t try to use our tickets for Cincinnati Pops concerts and touring Broadway shows performing here. Health issues made worse by Alzheimer’s meant she couldn’t sit through a performance, even until its intermission.

My decision came slowly, but finally I arranged for friends to use our tickets for the next show and told our usual companions we would not be joining them. When I hung up from the second of those conversations, the same blast of grief overtook me. I went into our bathroom where Evelyn wouldn’t hear me, stood in front of the toilet behind a closed door, and sobbed.

The same blast of grief overtook me.

I’ve been attending performances like these since I was a middle schooler and my piano teacher urged us to buy tickets for the community concerts happening regularly at the local Waukegan (Illinois) High School auditorium. There I was introduced to all kinds of professional musical artisanship, experiences that created in me a habit and a thirst to see more. In college I went with friends whenever we could get affordable tickets. With Evelyn I had visited beautiful halls, simple auditoriums, and outdoor theaters to enjoy plays and musicals and symphonies and recitals for all the 40-plus years of our marriage.

But that day, trying to catch my breath in my bathroom, I felt certain I would never go with her to such an event again.

Tears in a bottle

I share all of this for two reasons:

If you’re the friend of a caregiver, be sensitive to the fact that the river of changes the caregiver must navigate sometimes threatens to flood out of its banks. There’s not much anyone can do to stanch the flow, but it helps for those close simply to acknowledge the stream of losses. With the 60s pop song, I’ll assert, “You’d likely cry too if they happened to you.”

If you’re a caregiver given to tears as I am, perhaps you can take comfort in a verse from the Psalms that somehow I hadn’t pondered before. “You keep track of all my sorrows,” the psalmist prayed to God. “You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book” (Psalm 56:8, New Living Translation).

I know no one wants to sit and see me crying. But I also know God, “the God of all comfort,” is OK with it. Somehow he’s keeping track of the tears, grateful I can admit my losses to him and present to walk with me in my grief. Believing that helps me leave my tears where they fall and move on, even as I expect more surprising losses—and tears—in the days to come.

Photos by Gadiel Lazcano and gryffyn m on Unsplash