A Collection of Stories

What Tears Are For

My brother said I was too happy, and that that was a bad thing. I never thought much of this statement as a ten-year-old kid and brushed it aside as anyone would who had a brother like mine. Later on, maybe a year later, he added that cheerful people always had the most trouble in their lives. I laughed as I usually did and told him my life was too good to not be happy. I remember him shaking his head and frowning. "Stupid kid," I imagined him to say. I smiled. That sounded like my brother.

"Hard times will come for you, Gray," he said one night before bed. He lingered a minute in the doorway. "And I hope when they do, you'll be able to handle them."

Gee, thanks, I thought before snuggling under the blankets with Banjo, my blue stuffed elephant.

By the time I was twelve, my aunt came to live with us, and mom and dad started arguing. I hated witnessing their fights, so I'd grab my skateboard from the garage and take to the streets, trying to decide what was wrong with my folks and hoping everything would go back to normal in an hour.

The fights didn't stop. Two weeks before my thirteenth birthday, my parents had concluded their divorce. My brother had moved out by then and I rarely saw him anymore.

Things were different.

Our house became a quiet one and my folks constantly fought for my affection; leaving me to battle with the decision of whom to love more. By fifteen, I resented both my parents avoiding them as best as I could, convinced that they had ruined my perfectly happy life with their quarrels. They were selfish, and I hated them for it. Birthdays became check days and summers I spent with grandad who was an exceptional friend... before cancer's cruel hands clawed him from me. I locked myself in the bathroom after the funeral, trying to decide if I would cry. My brother used to say the dead didn't need our tears. But Grandad said that tears weren't for the buried souls but for the living because it relieved sorrow and pain and cleansed the soul. But I didn't cry. I punched the mirror instead and watched the blood ooze from my knuckles. That was how my fifteen-year-old self grieved for my grandad.

When I was seventeen, Dad's new wife cheated on him with our neighbor. I told her to get out, but she begged me to keep quiet and even offered to reward me if I did. I called her a bitchy slut. She gave me a ringing slap in the face, but she wasn't my mother. I dragged her out of the house, daring her to come back.

Mom's man was an alcoholic and used to beat her. I kicked his ass until he was choking on his blood and couldn't stand on his own two feet. I was arrested and Mom paid my bail. She cried, but I pretended not to notice. Her tears were her problem, and it wasn't long before she started taking pills for her depression.

At nineteen, I learned my girlfriend's baby wasn't mine. I left her and took solace in cigarettes. Dad and I got into arguments over my smoking habits, but I wasn't having it. I stopped talking to him and moved all of my stuff from his house. I didn't know my family anymore, and they didn't know me.

Five years later, my best friend, who'd been smoking from she was nine, was in the hospital battling lung cancer. She bore her illness bravely and said in her good humored way when she was finally failing,

"It's been a fun ride, Gray, but it's gotta end somewhere, man."

She clasped my hand with her thin, pale one. "If you ever meet my son, tell him I loved him for me, will you?" She coughed. "If I had had my way, he'd have been right here, and you'd have been godfather," then she chuckled. "Wouldn't that have been something?"

She died the next morning.

And I smoked my last cigarette that day.

Despite that, I didn't cry.

I landed in jail a couple times but was let off thanks to an unusually devoted uncle who, for some unexplainable reason, took an interest in me. I remained indifferent to him for years. After all, he was my dad's brother, and the sight of him made me tick.

It was two years later when my brother came to see me. He looked the same way I remembered, and I told him so. He shrugged, then, after looking me over, said in his usual way,

"You look like shit."

I smirked.

"I feel like it, too."

His eyes flashed, and he planted himself in front of me and grabbed me by the shoulders like he used to when I was little. He gave me a shake.

"But what are you gonna do about it? So life's given you shit. You're actually gonna take it? You're better than that! Now get off your ass and make something of yourself." His eyes softened, and I saw for the first time that my brother, though distant, was perhaps the only person in my life who had never changed.

We started boxing.

We were at it again the next day. And the day after.

My brother said I was coming back, and I felt it too. I got stronger. Healthier. Lighter. Happier.

Three months later, I cried. Not for Granddad, my parents or even my best friend, but for me-for what I could have been and what I later planned to be. The weight of my losses, failures, disappointments, struggles, and trials fell off me like a layer of dead skin. I took a shuddering breath-I found myself at last.

My brother and grandad were right: the dead don't need my tears.

... And so, I'll save them for the living.