I never thought that tears would become my friend, but that they have.

"My tears have been my food day and night," wrote the Psalmist.

Nourishment for an aching soul.

A healing balm for a broken heart.

Are there really some who dare say "real men don't cry"?

I suspect they are not among those with a daughter lost.

Or they perhaps penned the words above - of tears in the heart not reaching the eyes.

I have wondered: Do my tears really well up from within my soul, from the center of my being, as it so often feels? And do tears give the only voice possible to a broken soul-love that a father has for a daughter's death? Do my tears, shed for the loss of this one I love, somehow connect my soul and my heart with others who have gone before me in mourning?

Tears, so foreign such a short little while ago (or is it an eon ago?), have indeed become part of my life now, now that I sit on the mourning bench.

I used to joke that Missy was going to break someone's heart, thinking of her attractiveness to the young men around her. I did not expect to be the one whose heart would be broken, the one whose tears - those that reach the eye as well as those that remain in the heart - would become my food day and night.