You sometimes have to cry.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      4 comments      link this post     


In gradeschool, I was teased often for many reasons but the one that has affected me to this day was about crying.

I cry very easy. Tears are always just at the back of my eye. People would be surprised how often I cry, how often I'm very close to tears and they don't know it. Kids teased me for being a crybaby. I cried openly at my desk when the teacher read Wilson Rawls Where the Red Fern Grows, and the other kids teased me for it later at recess. I cried when I flubbed my half of a piano duet during a recital only to come to school the next day and hear the other girl laughing at me about it with some other girls. I cried when the car hit a bird or ran over a mouse on the road.

Crying is associated with weakness, I learned. I had to get it under control.

I quickly learned to not cry around people. I have about a number of different ways I keep myself from crying that work 95 percent of the time. I put on a cloak of apathy and pretend I don't care about anything until there's no one around. I make jokes. I lie and answer that everything is fine with a smile and quick change of the subject; most people never follow up. I bite the inside of my lip, sometimes until it bleeds, focusing on the pain instead of what's making me cry. I pretend I'm someone else who wouldn't care or cry, and so I don't. I remove myself from the situation. I compartmentalize. Until I'm alone. I cry in movies, often openly weeping, but the lights are out and I get it together before they come back on. No one sees.

I didn't cry at any of my grandparent's funerals, keeping a stiff upper lip until I was home alone in my room. Then I bawled. Very few people see me break down and cry in front of them. It's a rare time when I do. I learned that if you cry in front of people they call you a crybaby, it makes them uncomfortable, they write you off as some pathetic woman, they don't know what to do and so they pat you on the shoulder and tell you everything's OK and to stop crying, or worse, they are kind and give you a hug and you cry even more.

When I brought Munchkin, our family cat, to the vet, I was determined not to cry. I brought him into the room, set him on the cold metal table, held him while the vet took his temperature, calmly nodded as the vet said his temperature was actually cold. I agreed it was probably a sign he was giving up. I listened as the vet said we could do tests and things but really, there wasn't any point in promising. I nodded and said that yes, I was sure he should put the cat down.

The problem was the vet was so nice and Munchkin had looked at me, curled up in his little box during the entire car ride, eyes big with that goofy Persian grin on his face. He trusted me to take care of him. He was looking at me again, leaning unsteadily against me, drooling.

I started to cry. And I knew I wouldn't be stopping any time soon. It was one of those hiccuping cries. I tucked my head down and answered the vet's questions with a nod of the head. He handed me a kleenex. Munchkin laid calmly on the table leaning into me, looking about, confused.

The vet brought an electric clipper over to shave a bit of hair off of Munchkin's front leg so he could find a vein. It was so late at night, quiet and dark, that the loud crack the clipper made turning on was too harsh for the situation. I cried more. The blade ate into Munchkin's fur and it fell away and he didn't even twitch.

I watched the vet fill the syringe with pink liquid, Munchkin leaning heavily into my forearms, rubbing. I began scratching him under his chin, on the right side, because that was his favorite spot. He started purring a loud, raspy purr. The flickering flourescent light and the metal table seemed all wrong after 17 years. Munchkin had his own La-Z-Boy chair for years and without warning yesterday, he hopped down never to get back on, never realizing it. We never realize the "last times" in life. My cheeks stung as tears dried up in a path only to be followed by a flood of more. My lips were salty. Crying begats more crying if you try to keep it inside all the time. If one tear gets through, they all get through.

Munchkin kept purring, closing his eyes and resting his head in my other hand, which was cupped under his chin. The vet began injecting the pink liquid into his vein and I realized we were taking his life now and Munckin kept purring and then his head started to droop more in my hand as I kept scratching his chin and he kept purring and the vet paused a bit, then began gently injecting more and Munchkin started to go lax in against my sweatshirt and his purring grew softer and I gently began lowering his head on the metal table and I could hardly see and breathe because the cat we've had for more than half my life was dying right there on the table while I held him and then his purring and breath stopped at the same time and I softly let go of his head as he softly let go of his life.

The vet kindly and professionally asked if we wanted to leave Munchkin with him or take the body and I said that we would take it. I began petting him, wanting to get a few last strokes in before he began to get cold. The vet gently wrapped him in the towel I had brought and tucked him into the box he had ridden down in, looking at me the whole way with big eyes and voiceless meows. His eyes were closed now.

We took Munchkin back home. It was late, so we'd bury him the next morning. Before I put the lid back on the box and went to bed, I pulled aside the towel to get one last look. There Munchkin lay, his little front feet tucked up under his chin just like he used to sleep, his big eyes closed, his Persian grin gone.

The next day, before I left for the weekend, Dad wrapped the box in plastic and took Munchkin out back, along the line of cottonwood trees and the shelterbelt where two horses and our dog are buried, and put the box in the ground. He'd dug a deep hole with the tractor and loader.

Sooner or later every pet we have makes that trip with the loader out back, the people silent while the loader roars. Sometimes you have to cry. Even if people see you. It's worse if you don't. So call me a crybaby. Because I am.



| tag: crying |

Labels: my life, personal, pets

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger  5/07/2006 10:17:00 PM   (4) comments   Links to this post    

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