Time was, it was OK to cry a little. Not your cry wolf or cry havoc to sound an alarm or outcry, but the kind with real tears, boo hoo.

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the heart, and gather in the eyes.”

Lachry mostly speaking, 40 percent of the people are lonely. Some cry over spilled milk, a broken heirloom cup, a bad haircut, things that are not reversible. Nothing can replace them. Dead dogs and cats fall in this category. “Pié Jesu.”

More Latin, lacrima (tears) and lacrimal glands are explained with no empathy. “The walls of each sacculus consists of a delicate membrana propria, and the cavity contains polyhedral secreting cells.” Thanks to Dr. Frances Murdoch’s 1878 Encyclopedia.

Hanging teardrop pulls were on Victorian dresser drawers.

Some grown men cry, because they can. Wimpy women cry at sad movies, tearjerker paperbacks, broken hook-ups, and lost hope for future bliss, or when they get their “little feelers” hurt. If you play a country song backward, you get your truck back, your wife back, and your dog back. Real tears flow with the loss of loved ones.

Your mother always had a freshly ironed linen handkerchief in her pocketbook. Churches and funeral homes have Kleenex boxes handy, furniture stores sold you the caskets, horse-drawn hearses carried them. Pine boxes with the shipping crate as the vault.

W.B. Summersett and G.W. Wright 108-110 E. “Inniss” Street. Summie says embalming was started during the Civil War to help get the bodies back home. “Gravity” embalming was done at home.

When you shot your first bird with your new B-B gun or homemade slingshot, you knew the pain of death and cried at the little funeral in the backyard.

Ever wonder where all the dead birds go? With millions of birds around, you would think that the woods would be full of dead birds. Ever notice how animals don’t have the capacity to cry? Crying spells just short of come on you. Daydream of old places you have lived, rooms with dust that may be your ancestors. Don’t stir them up.

Things you miss: Aunt Dot’s persimmon pudding, milking time, pawpaw trees, the pantry, glass door knobs, wallpaper borders, flannel quilts.

“There are places I remember.”

“Eyes and fingers drop onto silverware that is/not silverware. Outside the window, waves beat against the chipped walls of the old city.” Carver

The local, talented, late Curle Seckler, who sang with Flat and Scruggs, wrote many of their songs including “I’ll Never Shed Another Tear.” But how things have changed: “I thought of love, I had been denied.”

Curly grew up without a mother and father. People that are gone, but not forgotten, command the most tears. Sweet faces that shared your happy times, before they abandoned us. Now we only have touching memories and ceremonies for our deceased firemen to remember them.

The truth is, they are all gone now. Only photographs survive. Sobbing will not bring them back, not even if you “cry me a river,” bawl your eyes out. Enough tears to fill up the ocean. “Unfathomable sea, whose waves are years. Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe are brackish with the salt of human tears.” Scully.

So, take heart, have a good cry; get it out of your system. Go crumble Oreos in warm milk, go sit on top of a Ferris wheel, then put your feet down on the floor, stand up tall, tackle adversity. Go and weep no more; why do you wanna cry about it?

Clyde is a Salisbury artist.