When I was seven or eight, I chipped one of my adult teeth by falling face first, on the sidewalk. When I went inside, my Mom looked at me and started crying. Since I didn’t know I’d chipped a tooth, I didn’t know what was wrong, and then she explained. That event stayed with me all my life, and sometimes I think it’s the only time I ever saw my mother crying. Sure, I’ve seen her weeping at funerals, but that’s not the same.
Fast forward four decades. I get a call at five in the morning. It’s my bandleader’s wife, and she said the hospital just called her and said she should get to the hospital immediately because he wasn’t going to last long. It turns out he’d been take to the hospital the night before in an ambulance. I pulled on clothes and got to her and then to the hospital as fast as possible. They put us in the waiting room, and asked us to wait for the doctor. I knew what that meant. The intern came in about ten minutes later, and told us he had passed. He asked us if we wanted to see the body. We went in.
As I went home later, I couldn’t stop crying. I was still crying when I got home, and my kids were getting ready to go to school. They saw me crying in full grief for a while. I was inconsolable. They remember this to this day, I think, and will probably remember it for much of their lives. Occasionally my daughter will ask if I’m going to cry like when my bandleader died (usually when someone else dies).
I think it’s extremely important to model all emotions in front of your kids. If you don’t, you are, I believe, hurting their ability to feel things in the future. It shows them that crying isn’t weakness, but a normal emotion. The ability to feel your emotions is important, and makes you a stronger person, who is able to empathize with others. I want my kids to be able to be full human beings, emotionally, and not be hampered by any messages that it is not ok to feel certain things.