Eating Tears

[Brad Fox]

This essay is from a book called How Can I Help  by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman.  It reminds me of Psalm 80: 5 which says:  You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.  It is probably the most poignant, intimate story of shared pain and love that I have ever read.  I thought you would also be moved by it.  Maybe, just maybe, it will change your life.  I hope it will bless you:

 

My idea was pretty simple at the beginning.  I started to volunteer in wards with terminally ill children or burn victims - just go in there to cheer them up a little, spread around some giggles.  Gradually, it developed that I was going to come in as a clown.

 

First, somebody gave me a red rubber nose, and I put that to work.  Then I started doing some elementary makeup.  Then I got a yellow, red, and green clown suit.  Finally, some nifty, tremendous wing-tip shoes, about two and a half feet long, with green tips and heels, white in the middle.  They came from a clown who was retiring and wanted his feet to keep on walking.

 

(Things) were very tough for me at the beginning - very.  You see some pretty terrible thinks in these wards.  Seeing children dying or mutilated is nothing most of us ever get prepared for.  Nobody teaches us to face suffering in this society.  We never talk about it until we get hit in the face...

 

some of us were setting up to show Godzilla in the kids' leukemia ward.  I was making up kids as clowns.  One kid was totally bald from chemotherapy, and when I finished doing his face, another kid said, "Go on and do the rest of his head."  The kid loved the idea.  And when I was done, his sister said, "Hey, we can show the movie on Billy's head."   And he really loved that idea.  So we set up Godzilla, and ran it on Billy's head, and BIlly was pleased as punch, and we were all mighty proud of Billy.  It was quite a moment.  Especially when the doctors arrived...

 

Burnt skin or bald heads on little kids - what do you do?  I guess you just face it - when the kids are really hurting so bad, and so afraid, and probably dying, and everybody's heart is breaking.  Face it, and see what happens after that, see what to do next.

 

I got the idea of traveling with popcorn.  When a kid is crying I dab up the tears with the popcorn and pop it into my mouth or into his or hers.  We sit around together and eat the tears.

Wow!!!  Maybe you and I are called to eat each other's tears too; and the tears of others who are desperately hurting in their own way. 

 

Let me know how you feel about this story, okay?