Balls

Last night on CNN they did one of those "human interest" pieces with a slightly sarcastic, half mocking tone about men and crying. They featured a clip of times like when Shatner (i.e., the GOD-- I'll hear no dispute about it!!!!) lost his wife and was mobbed by reporters as his voice broke and you could measure the weight of his grief on the Richter scale, when Jimmy Swaggert poured fake glycerin out of his eyes, when Cronkite had a hard time getting through the announcement of JFK's death and turned his face slightly to the side to avoid the unblinking eye of the camera. They interviewed people on the street who had mostly glib answers about men & why they cry. Women laughed and said they found it "creepy." There's a website with photos, called "Old Men Crying" that I'm not really sure of purpose-wise. Does it mean to mock the men, or pay homage?

It made me think of a few sad old men I've known.

Just before I got married I worked at a Subway in downtown Pensacola. It was right on the edge of seedy neighborhoods, and just down the street, apparently, from one of those kinds of bars that people sit in all day and drink their sorrows numb. I didn't work late very often, but almost every time I did, there was this man who would come in, just before closing. He wore a business suit and a dark London Fog, had shortly cropped silver-grey hair. If he wasn't rat-assed drunk, he would have looked respectable. In fact, sometimes when he'd come in, he wasn't quite as into the gutter as others and you could see someone who people probably called "Sir" or "Boss." Once, there was a long string of mucus from dry-heaves clinging to the upper lapel of his dignified black raincoat and he swayed slightly as he waited for his sub to be made. He came in, always alone, always just before the store closed, and blinked his eyes slowly in the way that only drunks and babies who are fighting a nap have, counting out the crumpled dollar bills and leaving with his plastic bag of sub and chips clutched to his chest. I always used to wonder what it was that made him drink so much, what secret sorrow did he, a man who by all appearances during the day probably looked like your basic young, but still hopeful Willy Loman on a sales call.

Then there was the old man who was the husband of one of my mom's home-health patients. She was frail, thin. You could see the tendons bulging out of her neck each time she gasped a painfully short breath in, and out. You could almost see through her skin, it was so pale, and it was quite plain that she was dying, soon. She told my mother you're so lucky to be poor, so you don't have to worry about all your things, and what will happen to them. Her dusty china-cabinet filled with crystal and plates testified to the worries she felt she had.

This guy had bought her a beautiful gold and silver Christmas tree that the store just delivered, he said completely decorated! and that sat year-round in the front formal living room, because she had thought it beautiful. They had taken it down the summer day we went over to deliver a lasagna for her wake. This guy would walk the two blocks to the restaurant/diner greasy spoon that served breakfast like you see in old 40s movies--on white plates with a cobalt blue rim, with matching coffee cups, all of which carried chips or scuffs but were clean and perfect. He would stumble back to the house and sit wheezing on the La-z-boy in the TV room, next to his wife's sick bed from which she never moved. (Her "necessaries" being a portable gadget that could be placed under her when she needed it-- which she, not taking much more than the IV, didn't often.) I remember her face when he brought home several barely-weaned kittens from the diner, and they jumped and tumbled, tangling in the tubing and knocking luckily empty bedpans over. The tiny kittens, filled with energy and life, somehow seemed bigger than the dying woman. His corresponding happiness at making that sad mouth turn into a smile.

These men had sorrows, and probably would have benefited from a good cry. I think it's saddest that men still feel that they should not be seen crying, should remain stoic like some Greek Warrior on a pedestal. But remember: Achilles destroyed an entire city, in part, because of his great grief. He drug Hector's body around that city time and time again in the rage at his loss. His rage, I am quite certain, would have included tears-- if only of rage and pain.

It's not a joke, nothing to take sarcastically, when real pain brings tears to a man's eyes, whether he is old or young. Now, those fake tears, the "I'm so sensitive" dab of the corner of the eyes at the right moment, the fake water pouring down the Televangelist's face as he swears his pain at his "betrayal" of his flock. Those are okay to mock. But the real tears-- they should be a badge of courage greater than a medal of honor. Because it takes more than courage for a man to cry instead of take it out on your liver, or lie facedown in your own puke-- it takes balls.