Big Boys Don’t Cry – Or Do They?

Big Boys Don’t Cry – Or Do They?

One of the great things about being a man in my sixties is that I can now cry whenever I want without feeling embarrassed about it.  As you may or may not be aware, we men are programmed at an early age to internalize all those mushy feelings and “be a man”, “don’t be baby”, don’t be a sissy”, “and don’t be a cry baby”, “don’t cry”, “don’t cry”, “don’t cry”.

I have had a problem with this all my life.  I have always had this emotional gene, inherited, I believe, from my Mother’s side of the family.  All of the women on that side were great criers and in demand for funerals even for people they didn’t know that well, if at all.  At any rate all my life I have struggled with being true to my emotions versus this notion of “be a man.”  At long last I have reached a point in life where I don’t really give a rat’s patooty what people think and, so, when the emotion wells up I let her go.

However, It is somewhat odd to me what brings these emotions to the fore; a song, the flag, the passing of a friend sometimes long forgotten, the mention of a name, the old video of John-John saluting the casket as it passes by.  Lots of things can bring tears to my eyes these days.  I’m sure a gerontologist can explain this to me as something to with hormones out of whack and the aging process but I prefer to think I am at long last exposing my true nature.

This past Sunday 9-11 I cried a lot.  It wasn’t the flag or the music or the obligatory words of all the politicians.  It wasn’t the stories of bravery or the horror of reliving the dreadful events of that day.  It was the children; the children who stood in the shadow of the memory of those towers and read the names of their parent or parents who died that day.  Three thousand children, three thousand lives, growing older not knowing their mother or their father or both.

Billy Dillon lived just down the hill from me.  When we were seven or maybe eight, I can’t remember exactly, Billy’s mother, Mildred, died suddenly in her sleep.  No warning, no symptoms, died, as I recall, with congenital heart failure.  Just one day she was calling Billy and his brother in from playing with me, and the next day she was gone.  Her death was probably the first of anyone I really knew.  I remember the pall that fell over the neighborhood, even most of our entire small North Carolina community and, today, I try to multiply that shock and grief by three thousand.

Though the entire community of Man can sympathize and even empathize with you, the grief is yours alone to carry.  Many of us know that from the loss of our own parents.  Yet only the Billy Dillons of this world can truly understand how these three thousand young people must cope as the years go by.

I wept on Sunday for balls not pitched, proms not shared, boyfriends, yet to be found,  drivers licenses yet to be obtained, aisles not walked down, graduations missed, grandchildren unseen.  I wept not only for the children but as well for the parents gone, cheated of life’s small miracles and pleasures.

I cried most of the day.  I probably will again and I don’t give a rat’s patooty what you think.

As Time Goes By.

Note: For those of you who have kept asking when I was going to write again (both of you), here it is.   I promise to be more regular in the future and my thanks to you for asking because I probably would not have started back without your prodding.