"The Tears of Strangers are only water"
When I saw this quote earlier today, my mind immediately flashed back to the days leading to my mom's burial.
I once mentioned here how the death of my grandma didn't really affect me as much as it affected my dad, well this was because I wasn't exactly close to the woman. She spent the majority of her days in the village with her husband, my grandpa, while myself and my siblings grew up in the city, hundreds of kilometres away.
So when the news of her death got to me, I didn't really react much as if someone had died, because I didn't know her too well.. She was almost a stranger to me.
Now I know the story I just told doesn't necessarily correlate that well with the title of today's blog, but that was how I interpreted it the first time I read the quote....that was the first thing that came to mind, which brings me to my mom's burial.
Like I said, the days leading to her burial was sort off eye-opening for me. I saw my dad's siblings, gossiping, talking and smiling as if we all weren't there to bury someone really close to our heart (although they may have been trying to lift our spirits by not being sad). But then I remembered that they all weren't as close to my mom as I was.
I mean, they spoke to her occasionally over the phone but they didn't live in the same house with her, they didn't grow up with her present, day in and day out, they didn't know her as much as I did.
So to them, yes someone important had died, but she wasn't as important to them as she was to me, so our level of grief definitely had to be different. It was almost like they were reacting the same way I had reacted when I heard about the death of my grandma.
And I wouldn't lie, deep inside me I felt angry that they weren't grieving the way I felt they should, but then I understood why, and that helped me get over whatever anger I had in me.
It is for this same reason why the tears of a stranger is nothing but just mere water to us, because we don't know that stranger, we're not close to them, therefore we have no emotional connection with them and we don't care about the fact that they're crying.
It's human nature, and to be sincere, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.