TV isn’t always a cultural wasteland, thankfully for us.

November 6, 2003

Guys have this stigma attached to them that society dictates that they cannot cry. I’m not exactly sure how that came about, and it’s been the punchline of numerous jokes through the years.. It probably has something to do with how men are always supposed to be strong, but the question is then are men supposed to be strong by not crying or is not crying a way of being strong? It’s sort of a chicken and the egg question, honestly. I’ve done my fair share of crying in the past as we all have, from throwing temper tantrums when I was little to when you bang your toe just a little too hard. I remember one time in particular that a tennis ball came at my face when I was a teenager, and thankfully I turned enough that it hit my ear instead. The pain was so excruciating that tears welled up in my eyes even before I could vocalize my agony.

Emotionally, however, I’ve been fairly turned off from tears for about ten years or more. I can think of only one time in the last five years that I cried. I don’t like doing it, frankly. Not because society dictates that I’m supposed to remain strong for some reason, not because I think it makes me “less of a man” or whatever that means, but because really, I don’t like the way I look. Well OK, that’s one reason. The other is that I’m not big on airing my feelings for everyone to see (I’m sure many of you have noticed that I don’t go a whole lot into my feelings in my blog), and crying is about the most public way to do that, even if you’re by yourself. You’re still externally expressing, and that’s on the range of emotions I don’t like to express. I prefer to remain more detached on the lower end of the emotional spectrum most of the time. Every couple of years, however, things either build up to the point where I can’t contain them any more or something triggers a strong emotional response, and so for a little while I get two big bloddshot, puffy eyes for awhile. No big deal, restart the timer set for three years or so.

Well as I said, I can think of one time in the last five years that I cried, and that was during a horrible period of time during my freshman year of college when I was having some serious relationship troubles and I was getting some pretty shoddy treatment. The woman in question does read my blog, however, and she knows that she did wrong (and knows that even now, nearly four years after that time, that I don’t like talking about that period in my life, so I won’t go too far into that situation because it’s not important, but thankfully we were able to move past that. Scratch that, I remember crying once two years after that during my junior year for similar but not identical reasons. OK, so a couple of times in five years. That’s still a long time. As I’ve been talking about, I’ve been getting up every morning and watching “ER” on TNT, and I finally reached the point I was semi-looking forward to, a point I remember when the episodes were new but I did not watch. When Anthony Edwards left “ER”, they made his character not just leave the ER for a different job, moving away where he can still be reached over the phone, but instead they gave him cancer–twice–which he then finally succumbed to. The two episodes today were there last two featuring his character, the first taking place in the ER where a letter is faxed to the staff from where he’s staying in Hawaii saying how nice it is there, and how he was making his peace with his friends and the staff, etc. A note had been tacked on the end of the fax from his wife, however, stating that he’d died that morning,, and the rest of the episode was spent with the staff dealing with their pain. The following episode were the events in Hawaii leaded up to his death, and his rapid degeneration of health brought back a lot of painful memories to me. My maternal grandmother died of cancer when I was still fairly young, but I have distinct memories of her before she died, happy, and smiling. I’ve seen pictures from the last time I remember her up and about, and that’s how I wish I could remember her, but instead my final memories of her are lying in bed, too weak to do much else besides flash a quick smile when she was awake.

I regret that I was not able to get to know my maternal grandparents better than I did, but that’s the way it happened. My last memories of her were very similar to what I saw Anthony Edwards going through this morning on TV, being too sick to move from the medication, a bedside table covered with pill bottles of all kinds, and that slightly slurred speech of trying to speek coherently through it all. That, and the last time I remember seeing my grandmother while she was happy and smiling, even when she knew she was sick and would die, I think it was in Hawaii. My Mom and I tried to figure out when that was, but neither of us could remember. I have a very strong feeling that’s where it was, though, and I won’t let those memories be destroyed even with what I learned later that she was wearing a wig, and that she knew she was nearing the end of her life. I’d like to remember my family that way.

And so I cried. Not for long, but enough that I got all red and puffy around the eys. I cried because painful memories that I had pressed down into my soul had fought their way back up from the imagery, and I cried because it was a powerful moment on a television show that I enjoy. I cried because it was time. For most people, Hawaii represents paradise, a place to relax and have fun. For me, Hawaii has a deeper pain attached to it. I’ve been to Hawaii perhaps five times in my life, and of those trips three of them have been for funerals, and one was a family vacation before my parents were divorced, when even a child of my age could tell that something wasn’t quite right with everything. For me, Hawaii represents sadness and pain. Want to know where I’ve been the most in Hawaii save for the airport? Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetary. That’s where my materal great-grandparents and materal grandparents are all buried, and I’ve been there on all five trips. If I ever go to Hawaii without my parents, I’ll probably go there on my own, too.

So tonight will thankfully be spent humorously, I hope. As I said in a previous post, tonight I’m going to Harvey’s Comedy Club downtown. I’m not in a funk or anything, but I sure could use a good laugh today. I hope that’s what I get, too.

Well how about that. I guess I did air some of my feelings after all. Don’t get used to it, though.

Redness all gone. Replaced again by the dark circles.