When Old Men Weep

By Robert Clemons

 Old men weep in the dark, early morning hours, when they realize they have fewer hours than ever before, and almost every real friend they ever had is gone in one way or the other.

So long ago, when I was young, really young . . . too young, I visited an old man named Jimmy whose face was full of weeping, but all the tears were stuck in his sagging eyelids.

I had never seen such a sad face, yet noble, honest, mourning in the morning . . . again, grieving that this might be the last morning of his beloved Edna’s life.

I was a too young pastor, doing my duty, visiting the sick, the lonely, the old beat-up warriors for Christ . . . cast aside by the world (and in some ways, their churches), because the world found them now irrelevant and their churches were too busy in “the fields ready for harvesting.”.

Edna was stricken with Alzheimer’s and Jimmy was stricken with a mind full of memories that would not dim, and a heart that, while broken almost beyond endurance, kept on beating.

Every day, at breaking sun, after his coffee and toast, Jimmy arrived at the nursing home to sit faithfully, all day long, by his Edna’s side, adoring her, missing her, loving her . . . silently weeping.

How could I understand what he was going through . . . know the anguish in his soul . . . ever, even slightly, comprehend, at 27, that this was not Jimmy’s and Edna’s unique ordeal?

All filled up with pious pride that I was bringing in enough sunshine to actually brighten up their day . . . I was immune to the realization that there wasn’t enough sunshine in the sun to brighten up a single second of Jimmy’s day . . . and Edna’s days were never ending nights.

I didn’t have the slightest awareness, at 27, that in just so many heartbeats, easily countable by elementary school math, I would become that old man.

“All my friends are dead,” my 80-year-old grandfather . . . my first mentor . . . told me, as he wept, soon after my precious grandmother died . . . he was feeling so left behind by the beautiful life he had carefully built . . . he was a fallen giant who so deeply needed my understanding of the profound poignancy of the dark valley he was travelling through in that time.

I could see it so clearly in his eyes, but my ignorant 23-year-old-self had no comprehension of the true devastation of spirit, mind, heart, and soul he felt in that moment as he wept on my shoulder.

Old men weep, and no matter the glories of the life they’ve lived, no matter the good things they may have done, no matter the splendor of the pathways to and through their sojourn on earth, the young men who follow in their footsteps do not begin to comprehend their anguish, even as they claim to understand . . . even as they imagine they truly feel their pain . . . they don’t.

Old men weep, and if they are good men, their tears are as much for those they love, for all the family and friends they feel they’ve disappointed too many times, for all the good deeds left undone, for all the promises left unfulfilled . . . for their soul mates, as for themselves.

I used to be a young man. I lived with the illusion I always would be, but in these early morning hours, I find myself old and weeping.

From my new book, to be published soon (I hope), One Unique Breath