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Real men do cry in public, with no shame

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published July 25, 2006

It's something special to see a man cry uncontrollably in public. That's what I was thinking Sunday afternoon, as I watched Tiger Woods break down in tears as he hugged his caddie after making the winning putt of the British Open.

This was Tiger's first tournament win since the death of his father, Earl Woods, and all the pentup emotion just flowed over him.

Watching the scene on TV made me cry. I was home alone so I didn't have to pretend to be rubbing my eyes. Sometimes, one good cry deserves another, even if you're a guy and society tells us that real men don't cry. I know better and so do you.

I've had my share of healthy public displays of tearful emotion over the last 10 years. As I watched Tiger's shoulders heave as he wept, his head buried in his caddie's shoulder, overcome by the enormousness of the moment, I couldn't help but remember the last time I had one of those.

It was dawn Labor Day morning 1998. My wife and I were sitting in a hospital waiting area in Rock Hill, S.C., waiting for what we feared was bad news. Hours earlier, we had followed an ambulance as paramedics frantically tried to revive our 16-month-old son. A Down's syndrome infant, he had fallen ill and stopped breathing the night before.

As daylight broke outside, a doctor came and gave us the well-rehearsed, "we did all we could" speech.

The impact of the news didn't hit then. No, not even when the nurse brought out my son and I held him wrapped in a white sheet, his body still warm. The finality of the moment didn't hit, even as I thought of all those people I would have to call with the news. Then a member of the coroner's staff walked in. He knew me from my work as a reporter. He greeted my wife and me and instead of saying how sorry he was, he put his arms around me. At that moment, the tidal wave hit, the enormousness of my loss washed over me and I cried uncontrollably. I didn't want to stop crying. Nothing else, not the wake, not the service, not the calls of condolence made me cry like that early morning hug in the hospital.

There is something about death and loss that triggers that kind of public reaction in us men.

Then there was the time three years ago, when I went home to the Caribbean for my father's funeral. I hadn't seen my father in years. We were no Tiger and Earl Woods. My lessons in manhood came from other surrogate fathers, beginning with my grandfather.

Throughout a week of funeral preparations, beginning with when I saw my father's body in a makeshift morgue, to the Sunday afternoon burial on a rocky hillside, I was stoic, calm, detached from the whole proceeding, like a distant observer visually recording everyone else's pain and loss.

But I wasn't distant or detached. I was simply holding my tears in check. It took two days before my emotional dam burst. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Because there were no direct airplane flights from the island, I had to take the last ferry of the day to a nearby island, where I would catch my flight back to Tampa the following morning. I reached the port early and was surprised to see three of my sisters and several friends there to say goodbye. As we chatted and laughed, the mourning of the previous week seemed a distance memory.

But it wasn't. As I left the departure area and walked 30 yards down the pier toward the ferry, my eyes started to burn and the tears that I had kept in check, the tears for my father, were unleashed. I cried openly as I headed toward the boat. By the time I walked up the gangplank and stepped aboard, my tears had ebbed. The weight on my shoulder was gone; the heaviness was replaced by a clarity and a calmness, just like a light ocean breeze.

Yes, for a man, there's nothing like a good, public cry.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified July 25, 2006, 06:49:30]