Certain movies trigger it in me, and sometimes so does watching shit like the first time I saw the Susan Boyle video.
Sobbing? Hitched breath.? Not in quite a while.
My Father died Monday though, so this week has seen plenty of tears. Sometimes I find myself just standing, staring and thinking. I’m sure it looks kinda odd.
It’s always a day away.
November, 1948. Truman beat Dewey.
Almost two years ago my 17 year old son had a massive stroke and collapsed in front of my eyes. He had brain surgery and was in a coma for weeks. Intensive care, tracheostomy and ventilator, every tube, catheter, monitor, IV, etc know to man and medicine. It was a horrifying experience - beyond my ability to convey in a short post in a forum like this - but it was worse for me than my wife because I had worked in medicine for many years as a respiratory therapist, in exactly the setting I now found myself as a family member. I was terrified throughout the hospitalization that my son would suffer fatal complications not from the primary injury but as a result of the drastic medical procedures that were keeping him alive. I had seen it so many times before. “The operation was a success but the patient died” scenario. Finally he recovered enough to leave the hospital for an in-patient rehab facility. After we got him moved in, my wife stayed with him so I could have a break. When I got home I collapsed in a chair and sobbed for about an hour, a combination of being heartsick at the tragedy that befell us and relief that he had survived the hospitalization.
Hmm… surprisingly, I end up sobbing in my dreams a few times a year, so it was probably then. I sometimes have extremely emotional dreams, and I can never remember why I am so sad in them, but I wake up and my pillow is wet from tears, my eyes are puffy, etc., so I know I was crying in real life too and not just in the dream.
The last time I consciously sobbed to the point of gasping and not being able to really talk was probably a few months ago when I was disappointed in myself and came clean with my boyfriend about some unpleasant truths about myself.
The funny thing is that while I’m a fairly emotionally open guy in many ways (lots of movies and even some songs tend to make me at least choke up if not shed a few tears), I almost never actually sob. But disappointment in myself will reduce me to a sobbing, hysterical mess.