Serve Them Tear Soup, Kids Can Handle It

“There were no words that could describe the pain she was feeling. What’s more, when she looked out the window it surprised her to see how the rest of the world was going on as usual while her world had stopped.”

I left my sister’s house and realized how proud I was, how I handled the secret of suicide by being open with her children regarding death. I was taking the time to be with my feelings, and to be honest with them by sharing what felt appropriate at the time. My mom visited them last week and told me that Katherine had talked to her about our time in February.

“Aunt Sasya was really sad when she was here,” she said. My initial reaction when I heard this from my mom was to worry, but then I realized that children also need to see sadness, and how fortunate we would both be when I would see her again this coming July for my dad’s 70th birthday, because she would see that each day until then I had been getting a little less sad.

“As soon as Grandy tasted the rich flavor of that carefully made soup, she promised herself never again to assume that quicker was better.”

When I got back home I flipped through my copy of Tear Soup. I came to the page that was just an illustration. Drawn were three pots with the words “Profound loss”, “Major tragedy” and “More than I can bear”. Above the pots were spoons hanging from the wall to stir the tear soup that Grandy had made. Above the hanging spoons was a shelf with cookbooks leaning against each other with poignant titles. The first book was entitled, “Murder,” which surprised me. As I turned my head to read the spines of all of the books, I read, “House Fire,” which I had had my freshman year in college when two guys arsoned my dorm room, then “Divorce,” which I had experienced twice in my childhood, and next was “Flunked Geometry,” which reminded me of the D grade I had received in Statistics. After reading all of the titles, I realized that grief and tears were around more often than we adults cared to admit. Then, at the tippy-top, above “Infertility” and “Spouse Died,” was the book of “Suicide”.

I shut my Tear Soup book and decided to keep it within arm’s reach for when I might have a child of my own one day, comfortable in the fact that one day we might have to talk while we stirred our own batch of tear soup.