I saw him cry only one time and I was ashamed.

In the 1960s a man was a man’s man. He was John Wayne, Clint Eastwood. A man was supposed to swallow back any feelings of emotional despair before they became tears falling from his eyes. He had to defend his masculinity. No real man cries. Ever.

Author Jared Yates Sexton wrote: “Men didn’t cry. Men didn’t tell you they loved you. Men didn’t talk about what was wrong. It was that Marines’ mindset, that old way where you were either tough or you were weak.”

So, I didn’t cry, even when I fractured the orbital bone behind my right eye when I was 15 after planting my face on the edge of a bleacher board while catching a pop fly in a baseball game.

It was a humid evening in July 1968. I came home from high school and there was a note left on the table.

“Mom had a heart attack this afternoon. She’s in the hospital and doing OK. I came home to write you this note. I’m going back now. I’ll see you tonight.” Dad

I did the math in my head. Mom was born in 1922. She was 46 and she had a heart attack? I thought that only happened to old people.

My father came home and I met him in the kitchen.

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine,” he said.

He grabbed the back of a chair to steady his legs and he cried. Tears fell like waterfalls from a dam release. I watched him hitch and sob. He kept wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. A blast of thoughts ran through my mind. She’s fine, you said. No man cries. You told me that. Only women cry. We have to be strong.

I was ashamed of him. This man whom I feared more than I loved. This man, who never had time for me. He was always sick, always arguing with Mom about money and about how the bills were going to get paid. This man who drank himself into a rage and yelled at her after she said, “My mother was right. I never should have married you.”

I went to bed that night believing my father had caused her heart attack. She was stressed from the miserable life he had brought upon us because he couldn’t hold a job. He was sick with stomach and breathing problems that sent Mom into the basement ironing people’s clothes all day long to supplement our welfare and food stamps.

I awakened the next morning with the image of my father crying in the kitchen frozen in my mind. I just didn’t understand why he cried for her when I never once saw one act of affection between them. No holding hands. No kissing. No hugs. Nothing. I didn’t understand that, until I found the shoe box.

It was several years later in 1997 when after my mother died I was cleaning out the attic of the house and I found a shoe box full of love letters my father had written to my mother before they were married. That day I began to understand what a 17-year-old kid could not possibly have tried to understand why my father had cried that night.

I can recall words I memorized from his letters. “We’re going to have a great life together. I can’t wait to start a family with you.” As I read through 20 or so more letters, everything became clearer to me. Their American Dream had become a nightmare starting the day when my father came home from his job at Mack Motors.

“They’re moving to Maryland,” he said to Mom, “and they asked me to go with them.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” she replied. “You built this house for us. We’ll stay and figure it out.”

We stayed. They never figured it out. While my father’s lung disease worsened and he was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers, he went to a tech school and was hired by a fuel oil company to clean out the insides of oil burners. His lung disease worsened from breathing in the soot. One day the company fired him because he was taking too much time to clean each burner while trying to catch his breath. He died two years after Mom’s heart attack, and the cause from death was bleeding ulcers and emphysema, likely brought on by smoking, anxiety and stress.

The tears he cried that night were not just about mom. They were about the decision to not move to Maryland. They were about welfare and food stamps. They were about the guilt he felt after the promises he made in his letters to love her forever and make a good life for them.

Sexton wrote: “Unfortunately, this is one of the earliest lessons in masculinity and it starts the first time a boy hurts himself or suffers disappointment. He’ll begin to cry and someone, whether it’s a father or a mother, will tell him, ‘Boys don’t cry.’ The scolding is bad enough in that it tells the boy he’s not allowed to show his emotions and that crying, a perfectly natural coping mechanism, is not appropriate and serves to differentiate the sexes.”

Sometimes getting older brings wisdom to the mind that a teenager cannot have, through no fault of his own. Sometimes forgiveness requires years of turning calendar pages before it can be given. Not only have I forgiven my father, I know that a man’s tears can only come after he opens the door to his heart that has been closed since he was a child.

Twenty-seven years after my father had died, he left me a gift in a shoe box, a lesson about love.

When I’m sad, I can cry. When I’m happy I can cry. But when I watch a movie like “The Lion King,” well, the John Wayne in me will try his best to fight back my tears.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com