The Language of Tears

“Where is my daddy? I want my daddy!" she cried over and over, her face crumpled in tears. "I want to go home! They left me here and I want to go home!" she sobbed. My heart went out to her as it would have to my 4-year-old granddaughter. But she was not my granddaughter, but a grandmother herself, if not a great-grandmother. We were doing a service at the nursing home and one of the patients had become confused. When we first arrived, she motioned to me from her wheelchair to tell me something.

“I need help,” she confided worriedly, “I don’t know where I am.” It was so reminiscent of my mother’s last years that I felt instant empathy for her, recognizing the frightened, lost look in her eyes as her memory failed her. I told her she was in the activity room and we were going to sing. The elderly woman calmed down a bit and I saw her mouthing the words of “Love Lifted Me” as my husband led in song. Whether that triggered some remembrance of her father, I don’t know, but she immediately began crying out for him. Finally, the attendant took her to her room.

Earlier this week my heart was torn at the sight of a small child weeping inconsolably at the final goodbye for his great-grandfather. They had been so close all of his seven years. He could only cling to the arm of his great-grandmother, who took him on her lap as they wept together, his eyes closed while the tears rolled down his face from under his long lashes. I and others tried to comfort him, but he was disconsolate in his grief.

There is a song that says tears are a language God understands. David says in Psalms 56:8, “ Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” God is mindful of our tears.

Jesus wept at the death of his friend, Lazarus. We are promised that someday He will wipe all tears away, that there will be no more pain nor death and we will be eternally with Him, at home. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30:5.