Men have a tendency not to cry; at least, not admit that they cry. Maybe I am not a typical man in that I have no problem saying that I do.
In the Bible, the world’s all-time best seller, in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, it says that “There is a right time for everything.”
It goes on to say that there is:

A time to be born, a time to die;
A time to plant, a time to harvest;
A time to be quiet, a time to speak up;
A time for war, a time for peace; and
A time to laugh, a time to cry.
A comprehensive reading of the Bible shows that Jesus, whom many say was the greatest man that ever lived, cried numerous times.
I have cried numerous times, and I am not ashamed to say that; in fact, I dont mind even sharing those experiences with you.


When our children went off to college, my wife and I always drove them to school. We took our daughter, Linda, to Syracuse University, to Georgetown University, and to Northwestern University five times. We took our son, Theodore, to University of Illinois three times, and to Harvard Law School three times. The only time we didnt drive him was when he went to England to study; we drove him only to the O’Hare Airport.
It is a given; it is natural for parents to drive their children to college. It was not so, however, in my case; my parents did not own a car. So, at the age of nineteen, with four suitcases, I took a cab to the train station in Chicago and then a train to the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois.
When I arrived in Champaign, it was drizzling, almost a steady rain. Although it was early evening, because it was January, it was already dark. I took another cab to the dormitory where I had a room and board arrangement. It was closed. It was closed because I had come early for the freshmen orientation week, but no one else at that dormitory was a freshman.
There I sat, on the porch, in the darkness, in the rain, and hungry. To make matters worse, I could hear the jukebox music from the drug store across the campus, floating to me in the stillness of the cold winter night. The song was number one on the Hit Parade of that era, I was Waltzing With My Darling to the Tennessee Waltz. I sobbed for quite some time, before figuring out what to do next. Even to this day, I feel nostalgic whenever I hear that song.


I was in the U. S. Marine Corps, during the Korean War, stationed somewhere on the south bank of the Im Jin River, building bunkers and patrolling for enemy infiltrators.
Along with ten other Marines, I was bivouacked in a large tent with lots of cots and a pot-belly coal burning stove in the middle. Next to it was a small tree we had cut down from the stony hillside outside our tent, decorated with pine cones and empty beer cans.
We were all so young, late teens and early twenties, most likely away from home for the first time at Christmas; we did the best we could.
Our problem was the radio; it was on all day and all night. Being Christmas time, the music was, for the most part, about Christmas and home. Before the Christmas season was over, most of us had memorized the lyrics to White Christmas by Bing Crosby, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Perry Come. Especially when Home for Christmas was played, I along with the other men in the tent, in the middle of nowhere, had tears welling up in our eyes.


The birth of our first child, Linda, was the best thing that had ever happened to my wife and me. She was beautiful, vivacious, alert and hardly ever cried She was the joy of our lives. Everything was so perfect.
Then a few years later, her grammar school nurse called us to say that, maybe, Linda was having some hearing problems. Immediately, we took her to our family doctor. He examined her, cleaned out some wax from her ears and said that she was all right.
But, she wasnt all right. As it turned out, she had a birth defect; her middle ear, on the right side, never developed and she could not hear from that side.
It took a long time for my wife and me to accept this unbelievable reality; it cannot be, it isn’t true. But, of course, it was true. We cried for a long time, as we tried to figure out why it had happened.
Because she was born that way, because she had perfect hearing in the other ear, and because she was inherently bright, she made the adjustments that allowed her to live a normal life.


Just as a person with just one eye cannot judge distance, a person with just one good ear cannot sense the source of a sound. When someone calls Linda, she doesn’t know where the sound is coming from, but she quickly scans over a 360 degree periphery to pin point the source of the sound. We too have made adjustments; when we call her, from a crowd, we wave our arms to let her know where we are, and in a larger sense, to let her know that we are there always for her.
An anecdote, almost funny if it weren’t so sad, occurred when Linda was taking ice skating lessons from Ms. Slavka Kahout, world renown ice skating teaching professional of that time. With excitement on her face, she came to us to tell us about Linda’s concentration powers.
In an ice skating rink, because voices tend to reverberate and get loud, there is an unwritten rule that people keep their voices down. As was customary, the teaching pro follows the student around the rink, on one side of the student and whispers quietly and directly into the ear of the student.
The pro was telling us how well Linda concentrates, to the extent that Linda didn’t even hear her instructions. Subsequently, we confided to the pro about Lindas deafness.



Our second child, Theodore, upon graduation from Harvard Law School, came to us with a question. He said he had a dilemma.
He had numerous job offers from across the country, but the two that appealed to him the most were from large law firms in New York and Chicago. He said he was leaning toward the New York offer for two reasons. One was the greater opportunities in the New York market, and the other was the higher starting salary. He asked, What do you think?
Our response was that the decision was his to make, that he had earned the right to make that decision, and that we would abide with full support whichever decision he ultimately makes.
A week later, he called home from Cambridge to inform us that he had opted for the Chicago offer because he wanted to be near home, and us. Yes, my wife and I cried.



The late nineteen sixties and the early nineteen seventies were the golden years of our service to the Chicago Korean United Methodist Church. One of our sad experiences, during that time, was the death of our wonderful friend, Mr. Kim Ji Hyun.
His father was an elder of his church in Korea, and he taught his son well. The son was our pillar of strength on matters of importance to our church. Many times, we took our cues for action from his faith, his Christian values and his knowledge of church affairs.
We do not know why, or how, God makes the decisions that he does; sometimes it makes no sense to us. Mr. Kim was taken from us, even though he was so needed, and he was so young -- he was only in his thirties.
As the end was nearing, he requested that his friends come to the hospital and sing, with him, the hymns he loved so much. Fifteen of us met in his hospital room, closed the door, and sang his favorite hymns, deep into the night.
We tried not to cry in his presence, but that was impossible; we all cried shamelessly. He was gone, peacefully, the next morning.
We were comforted by the Bible passage in 1 Peter 1:6-7, Be truly glad: There is wonderful joy ahead.

There is no shame in crying, in expressing the emotions of sorrow, melancholy, grief, love, etc. I think, rather, it shows character, strength of compassion, of humanity, of self confidence, etc. Most importantly, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that others will see us as being strong because we do not cry. On the contrary, I think, just the opposite is true.