the crying

For sure one thing I've been doing a lot lately is crying. Not just having tears in my eyes either, but great body wracking sobs which go on for some time. Fortunately its been getting better. The moments after I got off the phone from my sister-in-law to say "she's had a cardiac arrest and has been transferred to intensive care" in particular was bad, but so was the funeral and many other times too.

Often its simple things that set me off, sometimes its a delayed reaction. Something like seeing a couple holding hands and recalling her hand in mine. Then its off. There seems to be no way to avoid it only to delay it.

Babies cry and certainly seem to have that whole body reaction too ... I guess that they feel like shit as well.

I have been wondering if there is any relationship.

Lately I've been wondering if it is exactly the same thing as what babies feel. They react by crying (often inconsolably) when they feel bad. They can't express what's wrong and the only thing that they can do is cry horribly to express themselves.

It seems like its a natural reaction. Certainly its a reaction which one does not need to learn, as often from the moment they are born they are doing it.

I believe that that reaction stays with us all our lives, even if its something which we attempt to learn out way out of.

From birth we start to learn about the feelings we have, simple stuff at first:

• I feel cold
• I feel hungry
• I feel uncomfortable

eventually we learn other behavior which allows us to solve our problems or express our problems more effectively.

Grief is something which we just don't know in the first years of life, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that when we encounter something as powerful an experience as the death of someone we love that (having learned nothing to help us cope) we can only cry uncontrollably as a reaction to feeling like total crap.

One thing I have learned in this process is that its like sweating, if you feel hot you have to do it. You may not even notice you're feeling hot but you body starts sweating for you and then perhaps you start to be conscious of "gee, its a bit warm".

So you just have to go with it and cry like a baby when ever you need to. Anyone who doesn't get it ... too bad, they aren't really much of a human even if they are of the same genetic species.