IT'S OKAY TO CRY

"It's okay to cry, " I said to my kids.

I also offered this advice to many of the folks I was asked to counsel at my church and in other private settings.

I can still remember the first time I saw my Dad cry. I was just a child and we lived at 120 Sumner Ave - which would put it somewhere between about 1942 and 1950.

I have no rental records, so I have rely on the years of birth for my two brothers (1941 and 1945) to determine about how old I might have been when this happened.

We lived at two different locations on Sumner Ave when each of them were born. I guess, therefore, I was somewhere between the age of 5 and 8 at the time I witnessed Dad's highly unusual meltdown.

I wish I could remember the circumstance surrounding my Dad's tears. Was it due to his Dad's death in,(I'm guessing) 1944 or 45?

Or, did "Mr. All Thumbs" just pound one of those short stubby digits with a hammer? Probably not. He demonstrated a capacity for pain that he passed on to his three sons.

Did he lose a job? This, as per my Mom who responded to my question a few years later, also at 120, after the latest occurrence -"it's not unusual"!

It was not as popular an expression to me as it was when Welsh singer Tom Jones later turned it into a huge hit.

Mom claimed the lack of longevity in Dad's employment history was due to his stubborn independent spirit and difficulty in responding positively or obeying almost any boss's instructions or criticism.

I suspect there are a few of those apples at the foot of Dad's genealogical tree.

I don't know why the initial tear flow thing happened - and wish I could remember, but alas, I was a little tyke back then.

All I know was that Dad's crying took me by surprise. I thought there was no one tougher than my Dad and saw his crying as a chink in his armor.

Maybe it was just a childhood revelation of my own vulnerability. Who knows?

Much later, when I came home from college in the late 50's due to my Dad's illness, it was also "not unusual" to spot those tears in his eyes after his own return home and the suffering he sustained from the many shock therapy sessions he experienced at St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh.

I also saw those tears in his eyes once when I visited the hospital and observed the expression on his face as I turned his wheelchair away from the wall he was left facing after one of his caretakers abandoned him.

I'm sure he also shed a few tears in 1971 when he lost a grandson.

Despite all this history - and possibly because of it - I learned it was okay to cry - sometimes - as I did following the death of a son as well as my grandson, both named Brian; the middle name of my youngest brother.

However, strangely enough, I do not recall crying at the death of my Dad in the mid to late 80's.

This was despite the fact I believe I was the last family member to communicate with him before he began the long process of surrendering the ability to verbally communicate before his dependence on a ventilator prior to his death.

I was also the only occupant in that hospital room to hear the sullen declaration, "Barry, I'm dying", an admission whose accuracy I quickly attempted to squelch.

He knew better.

No! I did not cry back then.

Perhaps it was because I never remembered him giving me permission by saying: "It's okay to cry."

And, believe me; it is.