This is a bit of a common theme for me as I feel pretty out of the mainstream here.
As a human do we have a responsibility to show emotion. Certainly cultures express emotion differently and with different amounts of openness; but my culture states I should show a decent amount of emotion.
Given to my own devices I would describe myself as pretty touchy-feely. I believe friends should hug and kiss. I think the bond of human touch is too boxed up by social expectations. But the negative emotions are very hard for me. For me crying and being sympathetic to another pain and grief are some of the most difficult forms of communication and expression.
Today I stood at the side of a bed. The man who laid there was someone I had worked with for 4+ years. I did not know him well, just in passing. He is young. Has a wife. Three young kids. Strong and handsome. I saw him in the hall Friday at the end of the day and said hello. He will never move again from the neck down.
I had sat 20 minutes earlier in a small consulting room while the doctor told his mother he would never walk or be able to use his arms again.
I asked the doctor about the next steps. The process. What the family needed to be doing, thinking of. When his mom broke down crying as the words where translated about her son’s future, I waited. I thought thought about the next step. I focused on trying to think about what was the family not thinking of that they needed to know.
I am who I am and I will not try to be someone or something I am not. But I feel like I am missing a part of the human experience that I want.
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The good thing is you have to have both kinds of people in a situation like that. You need the emotional ones to do the grieving and feeling and you need the level headed ones to keep calm and take care of things and think of the next steps.
When my grandpa was on hospice my mom was the one holding his hand and being with him for days at his bedside. She was the one to make difficult phone calls and visits to friends and family to let them know his condition. My aunt took care of my grandma and made the meals, did the shopping, coordinated arrangements for all the out of town family, and thought ahead for what would need to be done for the funeral. They handled a hard situation very differently, but both were equally important roles.