Compassion

Sam cried last night.

A big cry. A sobbing cry. A lean on my shoulders and weep cry.

Jill and I, out of shock, held his little shaking body, one of us on each side, and let him get it all out.

He was careful not to make a lot of noise. There was an audience, so to speak. And he is not a fan of crowds. He didn’t want anyone to look his way. He didn’t want any comments or condolences or “Are you okay?”s.

Jill and I both know this; and that’s why we circled him, making a shield to block out the world, until he had finished. And he did, almost as quickly as he had started, maybe five-ten minutes, he stopped.

Jill and I both had tears in our eyes. We had been smiling, singing “Amazing Grace,” feeling an undeniable power of togetherness with the room. It was a sorrowful occasion; but I know my tears were because Sam had such a strong reaction.  I’m almost positive Jill’s were, too.

You see, Jill and I aren’t much for crying at funerals. Truth be known, we’re such sensitive souls, we do most of our crying before. By the time we celebrate the life, we’re all cried out.

Jill will cry at a sunset. She’ll cry at a lady bug left in the cold. She’ll cry if a movie takes a sad turn, a song on the radio that reminds her of anyone not in the room, a harsh word casually slung anyone’s way. She’ll cry thinking that someone is hurting, not even knowing for sure. She has a sensitive soul.

I do most of my crying at night, when I’m alone. The world is so much more complicated as we get older. I save my tears for solitude; and my children rarely see me shed them.

But Sam, Sam never cries out of sadness. I didn’t think he really, truly knew what it was. He will cry out of frustration, anger, pain; but sadness has always eluded him.

When I pulled the children together earlier in the week and told them that Jason Kennard had died, Jill immediately began to fight back crocodile tears. She didn’t know Jason well; but she knows his children. She knows her Uncle Paul will hurt. She knows her Aunt Melinda will cry. She knows Mrs. Sue has already lost her husband, and now her son.

But Sam, Sam sat still, staring at his little hands. There was no emotional response really. He asked questions. “What happened?” “Did he suffer?” “When will we go to their house with food?” - a southern tradition. But he didn’t have any tears to give.

So, why did he cry?

Compassion.

As they lead the body from the sanctuary at Fairview Baptist, Sam burst into tears. I assumed he was relating to the finality of it. The fact Jason’s body would be loaded into the back of a hearse and driven to the cemetery the next day. That it was the end of a life well-lived.

But when we made it to the car and I started to console a now perfectly composed Sam, I realized I was wrong.

“Jason wasn’t in the coffin, Mom. Why would I cry over a body?”

“Oh, I just assumed. Well then, why did you cry, Sam?”

“I cried for Seth. I cried when I saw him leaving. I started to think about how he must feel, losing his dad. How he must feel being the only one up there that’s just a kid. Zach’s in college and Whitney’s going to the Air Force; but Seth, even though he looks like an adult, he’s still just a child. A child like me. And if something happened to you, I…well, I would feel horrible.”

Compassion.

If you know anything about Aspies, you know they aren’t supposed to have any. Their mechanical nature and inability to feel empathy make them robotic, incapable of relating, uncompassionate; but there it was. Tears, imagining how it must feel, relating. It was a milestone. It was human. It was amazing.