Excerpt from FRONT PORCH TALES by Phillip Gulley

Tasting Tears

    When my wife and I first married, we lived upstairs in an old house owned by a mortician who gave us a rent break every time I helped him bury someone.  Eventually, they tore the house down, since in America it’s easier to throw something away than to fix it.
    We moved into an old farmhouse with thousand-dollar heating bills and wraparound porches.  The house sat in the middle of five hundred acres of corn and beans.  Came with a barn, a chicken coop turned garage, and a smokehouse.  Since I don’t smoke, we put our bicycles there.  The house also came with a whole tribe of barn cats, one of whom slipped through the screen door, unpacked his cat suitcase, and set up housekeeping. We named him Whittier, after the Quaker poet, and trained him to hide every time the landlord came around checking for violations.
    Our neighbor had a cat named Cream Rinse.  How that name came into being is an entirely different story. Let me just say it made no difference to the cat who, like most cats, didn’t come when he was called anyway.  The cat I had as a child came when I called it, but only when I ran a can opener at the same time.  What’s more important to know is that Cream Rinse and Whittier were nearly identical in appearance, except for a small white spot on Whittier’s chin.
    We didn’t have any children at the time and considered Whittier our “baby.” So when I was lying in the bathtub one morning and heard my wife wail and gnash her teeth, I knew something had happened to Whittier. Sure enough, there had been a feline-auto encounter of the worst kind on the road in front of our house.  Being the one with the burial experience, it fell to me to entomb him out back underneath the walnut tree.  Except I didn’t have a shovel, so I had to borrow our neighbor’s at six o’clock in the morning, which woke her up.  Being the mother of Cream Rinse, she was most understanding.
    Three days later, I was sitting on the porch swing reading “Dear Abby” (Dear Abby, I have neighbors who borrow my lawn tools at all hours of the day. What should I do?), and Whittier jumped on my lap, white spot and all. Resurrection! Hallelujah! Turns out Whittier had gone to visit relations for a few days, and it was Cream Rinse I’d buried. Perhaps you’re wondering how I could have made such a mistake.  I will simply mention that when dealing with flattened feline, one doesn’t look too closely for identifying characteristics.
    Now came the hard part.  I had to tell my neighbor it was her cat who’d used up his nine lives.  And I had to do it without laughing, it being unwise to chuckle when giving death notices. I’d learned that from my old landlord. But certain aspect of this seemed so humorous, a chortle and a titter slipped right out.  Which confirmed her suspicion that I was an unfeeling clod?
    Turns out Cream Rinse had gotten his name from Saturday night baths. So they had a history, and she had some tears to shed.
    Been times I’ve wondered how others can be so happy when I’m so miserable.  Then other times I’ve wondered how I can smile when other folks are crying buckets.  And how little those tears mean to me sometimes.
    Of all the traits we need to cultivate, empathy is the toughest. That’s when somebody’s crying but someone else tastes tears.  Most of us don’t taste anyone’s tears but our own.  And we wonder why our souls dry up.
    So today I aspire toward empathy, for tasting tears other than my own. And I’m going to start with my neighbor, whom Jesus commanded me to love, whether she loans me their lawn tools or not.