He sat down beside her, and he told her this tale:
There was once an old man who lived a comfortable life with his family; But he was sad, and often cried. When he thought he was alone, sometimes his family would overhear him say he was cursed.
The family was very worried, and tried very hard to cheer him up. They would say and do all kinds of ridiculous things to try and elicit a smile from him. But still the old man was sad.
Then one day, the old man died. At the funeral, a stranger approached the casket, and began to laugh. The family was angry, and demanded to know why he was laughing. “Because,” he said, “if you had only asked him why he had been crying, then he would have been freed from my curse.”
“So, tell me,” he said quietly. “Why do you cry?”
Writer In Retrospect 