When Grown Men Cry

I cried at my uncle’s funeral last week. Not because we were especially close, we weren’t, but because grown men crying has always gotten me teary-eyed. And this time, there were plenty of them.

My uncle was always in the background of my life. I’d see him at my grandfather’s house growing up, or helping my dad with a project here and there. He was familiar but not central. More like a bit player in the movie of my life—always around, but never the main character.

But funerals have a way of showing you a fuller picture of someone. The photo montage full of black-and-white pictures from childhood. The great-grandchildren you didn’t even realize existed. This time, there was even a dog! And of course, the grown men crying. That’s when my own tears break loose. When you see a man, a brother, a father, a friend, overtaken by grief, something inside you has no choice but to join them.

The older I get, the more it happens. I cry more than I used to. Maybe it’s having kids. They’ve given me a different perspective, a different softness, even when I try to resist it. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched my dad lose all three of his siblings and my mom lose both her parents in the last five years. I’ve seen the way loss layers itself over a person, reshaping them in small but permanent ways. Or maybe it’s just age itself—that slow realization that nothing is permanent, and every goodbye carries a little more weight than the one before.

But I think the biggest reason is that I’ve started to understand that a person can mean one thing to me, and something profoundly different, and more meaningful, to someone else. My uncle wasn’t key to my story. But he was central to other people’s. And seeing that love and loss written on their faces made me appreciate him in a way I never had before.

That’s the strange gift of funerals: they remind us of what we’ve missed just as much as who we’ve lost. You realize that even if someone was only on the edges of your own life, they were the center of someone else’s. And in those moments, grief becomes contagious. Not because you’re mourning your own loss, but because you’ve stepped into someone else’s.

So I cried. For my parents, who have carried more funerals lately than a person should have to. For my cousins, whose world is suddenly smaller. For the simple fact that my uncle mattered. He mattered to them, to my family, to my dad in ways I’ll never know, and to the fabric of our lives in ways I didn’t always notice.

And maybe most of all, I cried because I can. Because being a grown man who cries is no longer something I’m embarrassed about—it’s something I’m grateful for. It means I’m paying attention. It means I care enough to be moved. It means I haven’t hardened into the kind of man who mistakes tears for weakness.

If anything, the tears remind me that love always leaves a mark. That we carry each other’s weight, even when it’s not our own. And that the sight of a man crying, for his brother, his friend, his father, will always break me, but in the best possible way.

So yes, I cried at my uncle’s funeral. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I probably always will when the grown men cry.

Godspeed and God bless, Uncle Mike.

Korrect is from Aubrey Marcus, someone whose book, Own the Day, Own You Life, I highly recommend. If you’d like to check it out, they’ve given me a reader discount: use code CFGM → check Korrect out here.

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