The Woman Who Could Not Stop Crying

By Bobbie Jensen Lippman

Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.

~Rosa Parks

Early on a Saturday morning, I was on my way to run some errands. Up ahead on the street in our quiet neighborhood I could see red lights flashing and a crowd of people standing on one side of the street. I slowed down, like most of us do, to check out the scene.

To my horror I saw a yellow tarp covering what had to be a body on the sidewalk. Around the body were eight or nine scattered, broken bicycles. Having been an avid cyclist most of my life, I simply had to pull around the corner, park my car and walk back to join the crowd of people who were quietly standing and staring.

"What happened?" I asked a woman. She filled me in.

"There was this group of bicyclists," she said. "Somebody had a flat tire and they were all up on the sidewalk while one guy fixed the tire."

She stopped talking for a moment, then pointed at the covered body on the sidewalk. "A guy in a big truck came around the corner too fast, lost control and plowed into all the bicyclists. Most of them have been taken away in ambulances, but that poor young man is dead."

I sat down on the curb. It seemed eerily quiet. The police were still marking the area with yellow tape and talking to the young driver of the truck. The truck itself had ended up on someone's lawn.

I never ran my errands. I must have sat on that curb for over an hour. Eventually I just went home, my heart aching for that young man and whoever loved him. Three months later I would realize why I "happened" on that scene and why I could not tear myself away.

My granddaughter, Autumn, was working at a job while in high school. One day Autumn called me saying she had a huge favor to ask.

"You have to help," she pleaded. "I work with this woman whose son died a few months ago in a bike accident. She works for a while, then goes to the back and cries her heart out. You know how to help people and you have to do this."

Click went my brain. The bike accident. The young man under that yellow tarp. The son of this woman where Autumn worked.

I told Autumn I really had to think this through. Could I help without being intrusive? This woman did not know me and I didn't know her or her son.

I went into what I call my "Quiet Zone," and came up with a plan, having no idea if it would work. I told Autumn to gently tell this woman that her grandma (me) did a lot of hospice stuff... and to explain hospice because this woman was from another culture and maybe didn't know all that hospice does. Autumn was to give Saheema my phone number because maybe I could help with her grief.

I was honestly surprised when Saheema called, and yes, she was crying on the phone. My intuition told me to see her on neutral ground... not my house and not her home.

I asked Saheema if she would meet me in a park. I described the park and a quiet place where we could sit at a picnic table and talk. The only time she could meet me was 7 a.m. Fine with me. I suggested Saheema bring family photo albums.

I got to the park first, with a big thermos of tea and two cups. I waited ten minutes, thinking she wasn't going to show up. Then I saw her walking slowly and tentatively toward me, carrying several photo albums.

Yes, she was crying. I got up and helped her put all the albums on the table. Before we sat down, I opened my arms and she came to me for a hug. Neither one of us said a word for at least five minutes. I just held her, this tiny woman, with a heavy accent, from a faraway country, who could not stop crying. I'd brought plenty of tissues, but noticed Saheema used colorful real handkerchiefs.

We spent an hour together, drinking hot tea, and looking at pictures. As she slowly turned each page, naming the faces of her large and extended family, we lingered a long time on every picture of her son. Pictures of him as an infant, then as he grew up, school sports, college graduation. Her son was clearly the shining star in her family and particularly in her life. He was tall, dark and movie-star handsome.

By the time we closed the page of the last album, Saheema was no longer crying. She actually smiled a few times and just dabbed at her eyes. We never spoke of my hospice life, or even an "afterlife." We were just two women who knew what grief feels like, two women from different cultures whose paths just happened to cross.

I'd like to believe that Saheema began to heal that day. A lovely letter arrived from her about a week later, saying "Thank you for helping me and being interested in my family and my dear son."

The best part was when Autumn told me Saheema was no longer going to the back room to cry.

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