Loss Of Tears In Ula Taylor's The Death Of Dry Tears

In Ula Taylor’s autobiography, “The Death of Dry Tears”, she starts off with the deaths of two of her colleagues, Barbara Christian and June Jordan, and two of her family members. Although not particularly close to her colleagues, Taylor knew that they were not only influential to their respective departments but also to her own work, which explains why Taylor felt the impact of the passing of her colleagues as much as she did. She, then, tells her story of struggling with losses of loved ones and how she recovered from these losses and continue with her life. The main obstacle that she had to overcome was crying wet tears instead of dry one. What make it difficult for Taylor to make this transition was the fact that she was swamped with work which hindered her from fully accepting her losses. She tried to progress with her work and deal with her losses simultaneously, and as a result, she was only able to cry dry tears. In this article, dry tears symbolizes suppressed sadness. By holding back her emotions, she is unable to grieve correctly and healthily. She eventually made the correct decision to take a break from her work in order to “learn how to grieve in a healthy way” (177) and to “seek out new experiences (178), one of which is learning how to swim. This marks an important event in Taylor’s life because it “completely altered my relationship with water-and

The lesson that encompasses everyone is that health is more important than work. Although work may be important, especially if you are your family’s only stable income, but working while attempting to cope with numerous factors have proven to be detrimental. It is important to resolve those conflicts before resuming work in order to work at maximum efficiency. This is why schools always send out surveys to their students in order to solve any conflicts that may be