Men Don't Cry

"Be thou assured, if words be made of breath and breath of life, I have no life to breathe."

The silence is what I remember most about learning Nana had passed away. No hysterical reactions, no tears, and not even faces buried in hands. Just a solemn, all encompassing, sacred silence accompanied by eyes suspended in deep thought, staring off into infinity — past the walls of the house, past the crisp air of an autumn California night, and past Earth into some far-away dimension.

Men don't cry. At least, none of the ones in my family do. To be stern, to be stoic, to accept the situation with an unyielding resolve — that's how I've been raised. Or, at least, as the older brother who's had to stand in for my dad, that's how I've raised myself.

One day, just three days before my fourteenth birthday, my mom dragged my dad to the hospital after he had been complaining about intense sweating. He went begrudgingly, assuring her that it was "probably nothing" and that he was having to skip work for this. A routine checkup became an overnight stay, which in turn became two long months in the hospital as my dad struggled with autoimmune disease. My mom stayed up all night crying, praying, and on the phone, but outside of my mom, I never talked to anyone about the fact that my dad was on the brink of liver failure. I simply silently helped out where I could and assured my mom that everything would get better. That enduring acceptance of the situation came from the intense sense of duty I felt to my father and mother to not add more problems to my family's plate.

I've had to stand in for my dad other times, too, like when he was halfway across the world, getting a job in America so we could immigrate. Each time, I've handled it with the same, almost pathological silence. Something about that silence worries me, though. I'm afraid that my silence indicates a lack of love, or the dulling of my emotions. When my Nana passed away, I didn't shed a single tear, just as I had trained myself. Part of me wanted to cry, though. Part of me hoped my emotions, so strong and passionate for the man who had put up with my innate childish desire to explore our neighborhood, the man who had helped raise me, and the man who had never failed to tell me how much he loved me, would defy my stoic "training" and get the better of me. If I loved my Nana, I told myself, then why wasn't I crying at his sudden, abrupt death? I was ashamed to cry, but I was even more ashamed of not crying. For days, a deep heartache — a feeling that no one can ever truly diagnose — pounded inside of me. Yet still, I did not shed a single tear. I kept pushing forward — Nana would've wanted me to, I told myself — but the feeling of shame never truly went away.

Isn't crying human? Is it not human to feel so deeply, to mourn those you love, and to reminisce about all the good times you had with them? My biggest fear has always been that, by losing my ability to cry, I will lose my ability to be human. Then, what better am I than a robot, if I've lost touch with the first thing I did when I entered this world?

Sometimes, I wonder where I first attributed crying to weakness. No one ever told me that directly, but growing up in a family and culture where men are expected to accept the situation and be the "pillar" of the family that their wives and daughters can rely on, I always assumed it must be true. When my dad's dad passed away — three years before Nana, yet just as suddenly and abruptly — my dad didn't cry either. His face turned to stone and his usually sarcastic humor disappeared. Around us, there was no display of emotion, only pragmatic, detached statements of how everyone has to die someday. It was only one night that, by chance, I stumbled upon my dad quietly sobbing alone in his bedroom, while my mom cleaned up the kitchen downstairs. When I was younger, I took the furtive manner in which my dad finally embraced his emotions as a sign that crying was something to be ashamed of — something emasculating. Getting older though, I wish he had been comfortable enough to share those emotions with his family, because I know we would've readily supported him. I've realized that it's human to cry, and to do so in spite of intense perceived social pressure is one the most courageous things one can do. It may not be pretty, but perhaps that's what really makes a man — embracing your feelings, not running away from them.