Sunday, October 1, 2017

Tears and Life Passages

What is it about weddings that can bring on the tears?

Sometimes tears come in the fullness of feeling.

At the recent wedding of Ryan, a beloved young friend, I found myself dabbing sudden tears as he and Michael exchanged vows. I wondered how the years had flown by so quickly, how the funny, quirky and very dear nine-year-old matched with my husband Bob in the Big Brothers program grew so quickly into a handsome 34-year-old man who is now a skilled, compassionate psychotherapist and agency administrator. I thought about the countless conversations, feelings and experiences shared over the years and smiled as I watched Bob standing by him as Best Man. I tried to keep my voice steady as I read from Corinthians 13 ("Love is patient and kind...") during the service, quietly wishing Ryan and Michael the best kind of love all their days together. I shed a tear of gratitude that such a beautiful wedding was even possible for two splendid men who love each other.

Sometimes tears come from a painful or poignant memory.

At the wedding dinner, Bob and I sat next to Ryan's Aunt Donna and her husband Hermann. Hearing that Hermann had come to the U.S. as a child after World War II, Bob asked him about his memories of wartime and post-war Germany. Hermann's eyes welled with tears as he recalled his terror, huddled with his mother and four siblings during Allied bombing in the last days of the war. He expressed sudden grief, long buried, about the death of his soldier father who was killed in East Prussia during the last month of combat. He looked down at his plate of tenderloin and fresh vegetables as he remembered his widowed mother's post-war anguish with no money, no food and five children. And then there was the wrenching decision to send her son Hermann to live with an aunt and uncle in the U.S. He smiled apologetically as he wiped his eyes. "It has been more than 70 years since all that," he said softly. "You'd think there would be no tears left after all that time and when I've really had such a good life..."

Sometimes tears come from knowing that life is forever changed.

The next morning, at the post-wedding brunch, Ryan sat down beside us. "I've cried twice already before breakfast!" he said with wonder. "I feel that I've started a whole new passage in my life -- and it feels huge: a new beginning, a different way of being in the world. I find myself grieving what is past as well as celebrating what is happening in the present. Life feels so full of promise and joy and new challenges. Just thinking about it, I feel so emotional..." And his eyes filled with tears once again.

Crying from joy, sadness, stress, fear or a variety of emotions endemic to being human is not only natural but healthy.

Like reflex tears -- like the tears that cleanse our eyes when they are assaulted by smoke or onion fumes clear these physical toxins and like the naturally occuring continuous tears that keep our eyes lubricated, the tears that come from emotions bring some specific health benefits.

Dr. William Frey, a biochemist and "tear" expert at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis, notes that while reflex tears are 98% water, emotional tears also contain stress hormones that get excreted from the body by crying. Crying can reduce stress, blood pressure and improve mood. Dr. Frey says that crying is a natural way to reduce emotional stress and that it stimulates the production of endorphins, our natural pain-killing, "feel-good" hormones.

Recognizing the health benefits of tears, some Japanese cities have "crying clubs" called ruiktsu where people go to indulge in crying over tearjerker movies. This is seen as an essential stress release and a way to maintain good mental health.

But our society has not always been sympathetic to those who cry. Even when very young, too many boys are told that crying is for sissies, that big boys don't cry, that stoicism equals strength.

I can't begin to tell you how many times a patient in session has apologized for his or her tears. And, following the mores of the profession that the therapist sit with the client's tears while holding back her own, there have been many times when I have willed myself not to shed tears of empathy when with a distressed client. I can think of only two times when my struggle was undeniably visible.

In the first instance, my client Mariana, struggling with life threatening health issues and devoted to her precious little dog Nanuck, brought the dog into a session with her after he had been savaged by an off-the-leash Rottweiler. Lying in her arms, barely breathing and heavily bandaged, Nanuck looked up at her as she wept, blaming herself for not being able to protect him. I thought about how many challenges Mariana was facing already and how unbearable the loss of Nanuck would be. And I took a deep breath and bit the inside of my cheeks as I struggled not to cry for and with her. As soon as Mariana left, I sought comfort with a fellow therapist in the next room and, having overheard a bit of my session with Mariana, she greeted me with open arms and tears in her eyes.  (P.S. Mariana and Nanuck lived happily together for several more years.)

In another instance, a young mother of four, who had lost a three-year-old son in a terrible accident and whose marriage had disintegrated in the wake of this tragedy, suffered a debilitating stroke after I had been seeing her for almost a year. For our first session after she got out of the hospital, her father -- who had flown cross country to help her -- carried her into my office. My emotions caught me by surprise: I was happy to see her but so sad to see the physical ravages of her stroke added to all her other life challenges. My eyes filled with tears. My client saw this and smiled. "See, Daddy, I told you," she said, looking up at her father. "I told you she would cry." And we all -- my client, her Dad and me -- embraced and shared a box of tissues.

Holding tears in can be toxic -- delaying healing, prolonging pain. How many of our fathers declined to share or weep over their wartime experiences and became the unreachable, closed off people we remember? How many tears unshed over an early loss or trauma can haunt one through life?

There is growing disagreement with the long held sentiments that real men don't cry or that tears are a sign of weakness. Dr. Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist at UCLA and author of numerous books, insists that "A powerful man or woman is someone who has the strength and self-awareness to cry."

This sentiment, though it sounds very 21st century, has been expressed in many ways over the centuries.

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief," William Shakespeare once wrote.

And Washington Irving contended that "There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love."

Yes, there are healing tears through all the painful, touching and loving moments of our lives, tears that speak more eloquently than any words.