I am sure no one ever said to me, “Quit crying, boy, or I will give you something to cry about.”  Yet growing up in the rural South, somewhere I absorbed the message: “Men do not cry.”  Crying was seen as a sign of weakness.  I thought that men had to be tough.  The opposite of tough is weak; therefore, do not cry. 

I never saw my stepfather cry.  Not once.  He had lost one wife to cancer and experienced the painfully slow loss of my mother to Alzheimer’s.  No tears.  He was part of the greatest generation ever who got on with life and no emotion got in the way. 

The odd thing for me was though I absorbed these lessons and could be very stoic, tears would flow at the strangest of times.  A passage in a book describing a tragic death of a young adult would cause me to cry.  A wistful country song would cause my eyes to brim with tears.  A tear-jerk commercial would jerk tears from my reservoir of held-back sadness.  My children always made fun of me for crying at the end of “You’ve Got Mail,” when Meg Ryan finally realizes Tom Hanks is the true love of her life. 

When my brother died last year, I was by his bed.  A tear or two fell onto the floor, but that was all.  There was so much to do, so many things to organize.  My lack of emotion surprised the people who knew me best.  “We thought you would be distraught,” they said.   

My lack of tears surprised me.  My brother was my best friend, my loyal partner.  My lack of tears was not because I did not love my brother.  There was simply so much happening, so many details to chase, the ranch to keep running, my daughter’s wedding in four weeks, and major church decisions that had to be made in the next month.  A wise friend told me, “Make time to grieve.”  I knew I needed to, but the tyranny of the urgent led me to ignore my grief.  I ignored the wisdom of scripture: “There is a time to grieve…” 

Grief cannot be ignored.  It can be warehoused.  Like a blockage in an artery, it can block the flow of other emotions.  Emotions seem to operate on a master “On/Off” switch.  You turn them all off, or you can turn them all on.  Try to turn off grief, and you dim all the emotions of your soul. 

Last week I had a helpful conversation with a friend.  As the saying goes, I “got in touch” with some fear I held back.  Fear is another of those emotions I try to suppress because men are not supposed to be afraid either. 

When I got in touch with the fear, however, I noticed what felt like a breeze blowing through my soul.  There was movement, a thawing if you will.  The lights were coming on. 

Then on Saturday, I was putting out pine straw in my yard.  I had my airbuds in, listening to old country songs from the ‘90’s.  A song by Patty Loveless came on: “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye.”  The chorus goes like this: “Mama whispered softly, time will ease your pain; Life's about changing; nothing ever stays the same; And she said, how can I help you to say goodbye; it's okay to hurt, and it's okay to cry;
Come let me hold you, and I will try.  How can I help you to say goodbye?” 

I had heard the song before, being a devotee of great music.  But this time, through the first chorus, the dam of my grief cracked, then busted open.  I cried.  I sobbed for my brother.  I cried for my sister, also gone too soon.  For my mother robbed of delighting in her grandchildren.  For my Dad, who died far too young, when I was in diapers.  But most of all, for my brother.  My tears finally came.  The flood of grief would not be held back. 

For a moment, I was afraid the neighbors would hear me and think I had lost my mind.  Then I did not care.  My soul needed to weep, and I did, for the entire three minutes of the song.  When it ended, my nose was running, and tear tracks were etched onto my dirty face.  My soul could still feel the grief, but it was out of the warehouse now.  The grief no longer blocked the flow of feelings that needed to be felt. 

The wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, wrote these inspired words, “There is a time to laugh and a time to cry.”  It was finally my time to cry.  And my weeping was a gift from God. 

It might be a gift for you, too.