I Cry At Movies
And At A Lot Of Other Things
I like movies that have happy endings, that way I can at least walk out after a tearjerker with a smile on my face. My younger daughter, whose face you see next to mine on my profile, is a fellow crier. She alerts me when she has already seen a movie that I have yet to see with “Dad, you are definitely going to cry when you see this one, probably two or three times at a minimum.” Even my grandkids when I take them to a movie now keep checking my face to see if Papa has water on his face yet.
Besides movies, I also have been known to cry while watching television, while reading a book or newspaper article, looking at old pictures, and, of course, at wakes and funerals. The tears flow for a myriad of reasons. Often it is due to me empathizing with the trials, tribulations, and tragedies of both real and fictional people. The reported death or abuse of a child will always turn on the flow. Mistreatment of animals will also do it.
At funerals, it is often the case that it reminds me of the deaths of other friends and loved ones in the past. And as I get older, my own sense of fragility and vulnerability comes to the fore at these times, death is not down the road, it looms much closer than that. Also I appreciate more now my interconnectedness with all humanity. Hemingway’s “ Do Not Ask For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and…
