Christmas Tears

When I woke this morning, on the eve of Christmas Day, I could not identify the feeling I had deep in my chest. It spread over my body slowly, as if trying to find the space that would hold it in perfect pitch. I wanted to cry. But, just like the past couple of days, tears filled my eyes but wouldn't fall. It made me feel like I am drowning.

Is there a name for that kind of tears?

Pondering the same question, Rose-Lynn Fisher began an optical study of tears after a period of deep loss and change. "What are tears? What do tears really look like? Are tears of grief different than tears of happiness?" Over time, she composed a series of photomicrographs of individual tears, from others and herself, and published her work in a book, entitled The Topography of Tears.

When I found this amazing gem, I spent hours pouring over the images, fascinated at the worlds we possess in such an infinitesimal body of water. Each of her photographs are titled and it leaves me wondering what I would call my morning tears - those too stubborn to fall. Fishers' names themselves are riveting:

The brevity of time (out of order) losing you

Its presence lingered a while, then it was gone

Mom happy tears

What couldn't be fixed

Near the end Tom wrote, Everything is poetry in action if you can love enough

Quiet ripening

The boundaries of useless limitation

Godspeed, sweet light of my heart

Onion tears (in 3 parts)

A swarm of emotions heading out to parts unknown

In the end, it didn't matter

Broken children

The pull between attachment and release

I remember you

As she crossed over the bridge disappeared

When forward is a retreat

Tears of elation at a liminal moment

Your blessing lands inside me

Momentum, redirected

What it meant long after a time forgotten

Tears of timeless reunion (in an expanding field)

Old mistakes under a new sky

My brother's tears on the other side of a promise kept

In her introduction, Rose-Lynn writes, "Though the empirical nature of tears is a composition of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream. The accumulation of these images is like an ephemeral atlas."

This 'atlas' of her images resemble what you find on Google Earth, mountains and rivers abundant amongst imaginary boundaries, laced with geometric fields of light. The differences in her recordings of how and why we cry are striking. Each are as individual as the way we define ourselves. They are the tiniest constellations in a galaxy of grief and joy. Her tear photos frame our pain and hope with a visual record of lines, borders, and emptiness.

For example, What couldn't be fixed, centers on a heart-shaped cell. Its edges are contorted in spots, razor-sharp appendages on the outskirts of brokenness, with trails of long lines of grief.

What couldn’t be fixed © Rose-Lynn Fisher

How could it not? I still sit for hours wondering why the relationships I lost this year couldn't be fixed. Why did the repair elude me? What could possibly have stood in the way of love?

While my eyes are naturally drawn to the center of the image, what could have been missed is arguably the most important feature of the slide. Smaller, and to the left, is yet another heart that appears to be drawn by the hand of a child. But, what's significant is a tree growing up from the center with tangled, thick roots. It bleeds up and off the boundary of the glass. These genes are thick with hope, despite being hobbled by the question of Why?

Witnessing Fisher's A generosity of belief, my eyes marvel at the skin of a birch tree, thick with promise. Its distinctive flaking pale bark fills the frame with subtle hints of heart-shaped leaves. Knowing these gracious beings are often found in pairs, it gives me pause, realizing that these tears are born within a tangible space of promise. A liquid spilling of faith.

A generosity of belief © Rose-Lynn Fisher

Likewise, when I marvel at Your blessing lands inside me, I see patterns of leaves strewn throughout the frame, interwoven like the very thing in nature that gives me the most joy. There are leaves of oak, cones of pine and cedar, rustic curls of deciduous ideas. I envision roots of an enormous forest, coniferous and unending. The very notion of a blessing implanted within a single teardrop fills me with such a profound peace. What type of wind is so absolute that it can plunge itself deeply into such an infantile domain? How miraculous that we can hold forests of optimism in a drop of water.

The most striking of Fisher's tears is the one she calls, simply perhaps, Tears of grief.

It was the first image I saw when I opened her book and I gasped out loud. Out of all her photomicrographs, I find it holds the most meaning. Blank expanses. A map of sorrow that cannot be defined. When we lose what we love, it fills our life with pockets of emptiness. We spend hours looking for anything that might color in that limitless hole. What can we do with such vastness? How far must we travel to find an atlas that pinpoints an end to the soul-crushing reality that no place will ever look like home? How do we fill in the void? Who am I, if I'm not _________ anymore?

Tears of grief @ Rose-Lynn Fisher

Yet, in this slide of captured grief, despite all its omissions, there lies possibility. I know that I will spend the rest of my days missing my boundless mother. My beautiful brothers. My life-longed-after father. My grandparents who were my greatest blessing. All three of my crazily gorgeous aunts. My most compassionate uncle. And my Beloved. But, I also believe that they are still here with me, even if I no longer hear their voices or feel their loving arms around me.

The thing is ...

Our tears contain their laughter. Our tears are full with the infinite imprint of their love. While mine stubbornly refused to roll south this Christmas Eve morning, as I write these words hours later, my heart warms with the light of those I ache to hold again. For a single moment, and within the lines of tears that now stream down my face, I hear my mother whisper, I am still with you.

Is there a name for those types of tears?

Yes, and it's Love that never fades.

All photographs used with permission from The Topography of Tears by Rose-Lynn Fisher © 2017, published by Bellevue Literary Press