温馨夜读 PART4 07 The Crying Place 伤心之地（在线收听）

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[00:00.86]The Crying Place 伤心之地

[00:06.55]In the early ’60s, when I was fourteen years old 

[00:10.64]and living in a small town in southern Indiana, my father died.

[00:15.96]While my mother and I were out of town visiting relatives, 

[00:19.57]an unexpected and very sudden heart attack took him.

[00:23.84]We returned home to find that he was gone.

[00:27.12]No chance to say “I love you” or even “Good-bye”. He was just gone, forever.

[00:34.01]With my older sister going away to college, our home went from a bustling,

[00:39.82]happy family of four to a house where two stunned people lived in quiet grief.

[00:45.50]I struggled terribly with the pain and loneliness of my loss, 

[00:49.59]but I was also very worried about my mother.

[00:52.84]I feared that if she saw me crying for my father, her pain would be even more intense.

[00:58.41]And, as the new “man” of the house, 

[01:01.62]I felt a responsibility to protect her from greater hurt.

[01:05.20]So I devised a plan that would allow me to grieve without causing more pain for my mother.

[01:11.98]In our town, people took the trash from their houses out to large barrels 

[01:17.74]in the alleys behind their backyards.

[01:20.18]There, it would be burned or picked up by the trash men once a week.

[01:25.54]Every evening after dinner, I would volunteer to take out the trash.

[01:30.30]I would rush around the house with a bag, 

[01:33.58]collecting scraps of paper or whatever else I could find,

[01:38.28]and then go out to the alley and put it in the trash barrel.

[01:41.74]I’d hide in the shadows of the dark bushes,

[01:44.94]and that’s where I would stay until I had cried myself out.

[01:49.07]After recovering enough to be certain that my mother couldn’t tell what I’d been doing,

[01:54.10]I would return to the house and get ready for bed.

[01:57.71] This subterfuge went on for weeks.

[02:01.43]One evening after dinner, when it was time for chores,

[02:04.17]I collected trash and went out to my usual hiding place in the bushes. 

[02:09.28]I didn’t stay very long.

[02:11.06]When I returned to the house, 

[02:13.77]I went to find my mother to ask if she needed me to do anything else.

[02:17.62]After searching through the entire house, I finally found her.

[02:22.44]She was in the darkened basement, behind the washer and dryer, crying by herself.

[02:27.69]She was hiding her pain, to protect me.

[02:31.52]I’m not sure which is greater: 

[02:34.09]the pain you suffer openly or the pain you endure alone to protect someone you love.

[02:39.18]I do know that on that night, in the basement,

[02:43.00]we held each other and poured out the misery 

[02:45.74]that had driven us both to our separate, lonely, crying places.

[02:48.58]And we never felt the need to cry alone again.