cry if you need to

I sat in the darkness of a theatre. The performance was almost over. It was a modern version of a play* that was first performed in 1911. The text was word to word original. The set of the new production was minimal with a few benches and three movable video screens. Even though the original story was about an adopted daughter growing up and then being blamed as a werewolf, thus becoming an outcast and being abandoned by her love, the words spoken were more than accurate for the current world. Since the play was one familiar to me, all Estonians had to read it at school and almost everyone had seen the movie based on it, I knew that the play would end soon. And then it happened. Seeing how on a screen the family gathers for a photo and the outcast joins them there but on the stage she sits all alone, I felt how my heart squeezed tight and the tears started running down my cheeks. I wiped them off before the lights were turned on but the tightness in the heart lingered longer. 

 

I sat in the passenger seat in a car. I opened a book on page fifty. I had started the book a week ago but hadn’t had time to read it daily, so I had to flip back to refresh my memory. It was a book by a French author** translated into Estonian. The main character was a female guardian of a cemetery. I wasn’t completely sure what I thought of the book. A friend had recommended it to me. She had loved it. Between the everyday life scenes of the main character, she talks about the people who have found their final resting place under her care. I reached a chapter that featured an adult granddaughter’s letter she had asked the cemetery guardian to read out during her grandmother’s funeral that she wasn’t able to attend. It was a beautiful portrait composed of little moments, relationships and habits. And then it happened. I read how the young woman described her last encounter with her grandmother, I felt how my heart squeezed tight and the tears started running down my cheeks. I wiped them off before I turned the new page but the tightness in the heart lingered longer.

 

The waves of sadness when most of the time my life is a happy one, were a sign of something. I am not fully sure of what – empathy for the characters, the feeling that time is passing, the death of an older cousin some weeks ago, the amounting stress before the school’s week-long evaluation visit of thirteen visitors from three different agencies, the added responsibilities due to the head’s absence, some professional relationships gone askew because of someone else’s meddling and manipulations, the war in Ukraine nowhere close to ending, not enough sleep. I wish I had let myself explore my sadness. I wish I had let myself cry. You should cry if you need to. 

 

*August Kitzberg “Libahunt.”

**Valerie Perring “Fresh water for the flowers.”