Simple Sadness ~ Why Readers Appreciate a Simply Sad Tale

      I've always wanted to write a story about a young woman who had a late night dinner with Christ. A simple tale about child love and adult regret. But time has impaired me, so I intend to give it away as an example to a greater truth. Who knows, one day another may finish it for me.

       The tale goes like this. A long time ago when America was younger, a time as C.S. Lewis described as having the most mouth watering candy around. A time where everything was a bit more beautiful because everything was a bit more central. A time Prayer was still in school and the farm-houses were still found in the rolling grasslands, but still a time not entirely worth describing because it would leave the reader too depressed to finish the story.

       In this most common setting we find an even more common situation - a most unpleasant woman. She wore dresses that were too small and shoes that were too big. Her skin was too pale, even for distress, and her eyes wore a teary shroud. But everyone knew her for her golden hair. This was perhaps the only bright and most decent thing about her.

      She would spend her days having tea with her self and spend nights cutting the memories from her arms. She loved her parents, and her love was killing her.

       The night came where she slipped a note beneath her aunt's and uncle's door, swept down the stairs, out across the lawn, to sit at a table and wish the moon and the stars farewell. Smiling to herself, she knew she would seem them again. The table was prepped, the knife glinted in her hand. But death has a way to give a last word.

      She was startled by the sound of crunching leaves. And before I describe anything more, I must say the conversation that passed between them is the only privacy allowed to my story. However, there is something I would like to share. Just before I drew the curtains on this shadowy tale, something was said. Something simple.

      He saw here wrists. Each furrow strummed to the harmony of sorrow and pain. Each rivet burrowed to the cries of the heart.

       "I just want it to stop." her eyes beginning to swell, " just for it to stop."

       And the man reached forward, laying out both of his arms, "So do I." She saw the holes and began to cry."

      Writing is a delicate matter. If you stress sadness, you only stress the readers. The truth is sad enough, there's no reason to tell anyone why it's sad.

Time, and again...

 "The greatest teacher of economics is Time."


     There are two are two images that come to mind when I think of time. First, a place. There is always a place in time. And too often people try to take it with them. Perhaps it was a moment with a child at a playground or a coversation with a friend over the phone. But when they take it, to relive again, they forget what made it beautiful is that it happend then and not now. What made it unforgettable was that it wasn't always there. And perhaps the greatest beauty is found in pain because it shows one cared. And the Second, a saturation. Time will cease to exist, but our memories will continue. Life is a gift of God, a constant revelation of His beauty and His creation. And when we remember these two things, I believe we begin to understand the Apostle Paul when he said, "To live is Christ, and to die is gain."

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;  A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

                                                                                    ~ King Solomon, Ecclesiastæs

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
 

                            ~ Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death