Men Don´t Cry
I wasn’t there…
It was way too many years ago. But every time I think about the story I get all kinds of tears flowing from my eyes. My father is the oldest of 9 brothers and sisters, he knows hundreds more stories than anyone else about two of the people I have loved the most in my life: his parents. One, self-educated house-wife and one, self proclaimed businessman and landowner; more than half a century of marriage and two complete opposites that went from falling for each other, to loving the family they built up like the true life-pillars they are and were.
My grandfather was many things: emotional or empathetic not one of them. He was one of those “mens-men” kind of house-alpha, whose word was Absolute in any and all discussions. “I love you” in any and all its iterations was a phrase he never learned to pronounce before he became a GrandParent. As a parent he was said to be cold, calm, collected; some may say even too directa and stoic. However, his priorities were as straight as a danish highway (those are some STRAIGHT roads). God was number one by FAR. I still remember him silently leaving the house every single day to go to church and pray for his large family. Never did he ask if I wanted to come with. You just knew that at 4:50pm on the dot, he would grab his coat and leave. He spoke seldom, but the smile he let through as I grabbed his hand to accompany him to mass was more than enough to let you know what he felt. Rough, like an old sidewalk, his hand would never go until you sat down in the benches on the left side of the church (preference that remains a mystery up until this day).
Here’s the story.
The Pope himself (Jean Paul II at that time) was to come to Costa Rica to visit. My father says he just informed the family about the definite agenda change of going to see the Pope drive by the streets of the capital San José. A man who had spent his entire life building up his love for a religion that empowered him to provide for a family of 10 at home is nothing short of faithful.
So the Pope was in Costa Rica; they waited under scorching Costa Rican sunlight for hours… Until finally the car of his Holiness the Pope Jean Paul II became visible in the distance. It could not have been more than 400 meters through which he waived at the citizens of this very Christian country. And yet my father describes this event as thought the Pope had driven besides them for hours… He describes the moment differently every single time he tells this story but it goes kind of like this:
“the silent, stern, seemingly-stolid man who had raised and scolded me, my brothers and sisters for about 2 decades disappeared; and in his place a child-like-excited, arms-in-the-air screaming man roared words I do not care to remember. At that moment, for maybe 6 and a half minutes in which the Pope waived on Costa Rican soil and close to my father… He became the most incredibly loud, joyous human being I had ever seen. A smile stuck to his face, sweat and One happy tear humidified his dark-sun-tanned skin and little did he care. He Had Seen The Pope.”
That day my father realized there is always more to people than meets the eye… EVEN with people you have known all your life.
He was different with me as his favorite grandson (yeah I know, sorry but it’s true), he showed a little emotion, he told me stories at night, he would visit me every single time he could, and would suspend any punishment my father or mother had given me at any point so that I could stay the night at his and my grandmothers house.
And yet he never told me that story.
My father did, months after he had passed away…
on that day that I asked my dad to tell me the story of when he had seen grandpa the happiest…
We Realized, Men Do Cry.
