Bring Me Your Tears

Kanu Grpran, the Syrian poet, once said, “You can forget those with whom you have laughed, but you can never forget those with whom you have wept.” And when he said that, he articulated one of the profoundest truths of life—especially life as it has to be lived in times of war and after war when the sorrows and scars of battle still remain.

The man or the woman who has lost a child and who allows me to share that sorrow—or indeed any anxiety, fear, or pain—confers upon me the greatest compliment that friendship can offer. Oscar Wilde, who himself knew suffering, sorrow, and tragedy, once said: If a friend of mine gave a feast and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly.

If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would go back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode for which disgrace could be inflicted on me. He who can look upon the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realize something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God’s secret as any one can get.

If we share the sorrows of others we shall take the shortest road to our own happiness and richness. It would, indeed, be a great tragedy to have sorrowing friends in these days and not be per- mitted to share their sorrows. Another great poet was Edwin Markham, and he knew, better than most men, the meaning of this comradeship of sorrow. He sang it this way: I dare not ask your very all: I only ask a part.

Bring me, when dancers leave the hall— Your aching heart. Give other friends your lighted face, The laughter of the years; I come to crave a greater grace— Bring me your tears! Thousands of people will shed bitter, lonely tears in the years to come because they have had sons, husbands, friends killed on land, On sea, and in the air. We have known and shall know sorrow and loneliness.

I recently read a fine book—A Time for Greatness by Herbert Agar. I want somebody to write another book, and I want it called A Time for Sympathy. We shall have to give that sym- pathy many times, and we shall look upon it as a privilege of friendship in the years ahead. It is no small thing when friends allow us to share their tears.

Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ And the most important thing of all is that we share our trials with each other and thus bind ourselves together with hoops of steel.