The Lost Art of the Tear Jerker

There is the saying, actually a song by Barbara Mandrell about, I was Country before Country was cool. But she didn't sing it Country.

I remember back in the Seventies talking with my Aunt Wanette about Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette, how just so fabulous they were, like best ever mode for female Country singers, if not Country singers period. That was before all the hoopla about them that is so legendary now it's as if everyone always knew.

I was listening just now to Patsy Cline again. Hank Williams, in particular, was famous for tear jerkers. But there were so many in Country music at one time. And listening to Patsy Cline again now reminds how she could just hurt you so thoroughly with her feeling. Hank didn't just write sad songs, he wrote tormented songs. Like how could you still be alive and sing this, and he wasn't much longer. But Patsy let you live. It was a hurt as pure as water, you almost wanted to thank her for the total complete love she shared with that hurt.

The saddest of hers, right up there with some of Hank's, Lonely Street. It numbs you it is so beautiful and hurting at the same time. The tears are there, but they crystalize or something and don't come out.

But the one I'm listening to right now, over and over, it was written by Little Jimmy Dickens. You don't think of him with tear jerkers, but he wrote a piercing one, When You're House Is Not A Home. The way Patsy sings it, you are paralyzed with emotion. It's almost glorious. A lost art. I hate that it's lost. The world seems so shallow without them. Not happy now that they're gone. That's not what people are, it's just shallow now with them gone.

I was in Switzerland once mesmerized while sitting in a chair listening to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. This girl made a snide comment to me for listening to such a sad song. Like there is something wrong with me. Even with beauty being in the eye of the beholder, I'll tell you flat. There was nothing wrong with me and everything wrong with her and that was just a symptom.

There is nothing more excruciating, as impossible, as a lost love, with the broken hearts, the self-doubts, the lack of meaning that is suddenly thrust upon you. If you could hear Patsy sing Little Jimmy Dickens' words. You would share gladly the most endearing and marvelous pain any soul could withstand. It is now a lost art and seems hidden in the remnants of a lost, glorious, deep and in tune civilization.

I walk up to my door
And hate to turn the key
Emptiness is all that waits inside for me
That's how it is
When the one you love is gone
That's how it is
When you're house is not a home.

I look around and see things marked
With his and hers
Little things like this
Just make things that much worse
That's how it is
Since I live my life alone
That's how it is
When your house is not a home.

Is there a way out
For a soul so torn as mine
Each day I live
Is like a prisoner passing time
That's how it is
Just ask anyone who lives alone
That's how it is
When your house is not a home.

Shakespeare was so tame in comparison, when talking about how it is better to have loved and lost than . . . .

To have lived that, to have seen Hank and Patsy having lived that. I felt special in my pain. I felt Godly in my pain. Only love could produce such beautiful, wholesome pain. How can one feel alive without the fullness of so much love and the pain that is it's symmetry?

When I heard Hank sing, more like cry out from the dark, I was not afraid to feel the words he sang that I could only feel, but not express. I wasn't alone. The most beautiful hurt I've ever felt was with him.

Like a bird
That's lost his mate in flight
I'm alone
And oh so blue tonight
Like a piece of driftwood on the sea
May you never be alone like me.

In the Bible
God's own words do say
Forever on someday you'll pay
I pray the Lord to set me free
May you never be alone like me.


When my oldest was two years old I had a Country band in Switzerland. I remembered how my Dad used to sing Gospel songs to me when I was a boy. I pulled out my guitar and sang to my son a goodnight, but chose one of my favorite Gospel songs that my father used to sing.

In my father's house are many mansions
If it were not true he would have told me so
He has gone away to live
In that bright city
He's preparing me a mansion there I know.

Jesus died upon the cross
To bear my sorrow
Truly died that souls like you
Might have new life
But I know that soon there'll come
That bright tomorrow
When the world will all be free
From sin and strife.

He began to cry and I had to stop singing and his mother scolded me. I didn't really want to make my son cry, but I was almost glad I had. I wanted him to know. To know it. This. God put it there. I knew something in me knew God, and now my son did too.