A Son’s Tears: Searching Learning in Emotion

I would like to start with an extract from a personal story. This was written about four years ago, recalling something that occurred four years earlier. Horst, an old family friend, had been at my father’s funeral. I had driven him home that night, late, after the wake, and on my way back to the family home I found myself parked in a quiet alcove in a pine forest, near a lake and crying a torrent. It was the first time I had really been alone since the death. Up until then there had always been people around and always things to do. It was also the first time I had felt the loss enter into my body and shake me beyond conscious control. My tears grabbed me. I didn’t know where they came from. It was as if the rust, the grit, the debris right at the bottom of my emotional tank had been rattled then shaken free. I didn’t know I felt so deeply or so strongly. It gutted me. I hadn’t cried for years and that night I cried myself out, I don’t know how long it took but finally I regained sufficient equanimity and drove the final three kilometres back to the family home. The house was dark, the guests were gone and everyone staying overnight was in bed. I sat for a while in the emptiness of the living room, the dog came and lay at my feet and I remembered so many of the things that had happened between these walls. M