Someone mentioned a good cry she’d had. How it had been just what she needed. The tears flowed and afterward she felt fresh and renewed, as after a spring rain.

I think I’ve cried for a total of two or three minutes in thirty years. Just doesn’t come easily to some folks, I guess. Maybe a minute when my dad died, not at all when my mother died, as she’d told me not to. Once I burst out in tears like an idiot putting down a cat, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life that was. It passed in five or ten seconds and the cat died peacefully in my arms. I cried once for a few seconds when I thought my wife was dying and for maybe 30 seconds, just bawling, when I was misinformed that while she had lived she was severely brain damaged. I didn’t cry more about it, she’s an Indian and they don’t cry much, don’t believe in it, and too much grief seemed wrong. An epileptic learns never to trust his emotions, what for you all might be genuine for us is probably just a simple partial seizure. Life has been hard, pretty damn hard, but crying never seemed to do the trick. Laughing, though, works like a charm. Laughing I believe in.