I've been encouraged to share. So here goes.

During medical school, we have a course called gross anatomy, during which we dissect the preserved body of a deceased human being. At the end of the year we hold a ceremony honoring these people who have donated their bodies to science. I had not realized how emotional it would be. It was a little over an hour long, and family members stood up and talked about the lives, accomplishments, dreams, and legacies of their relatives who had donated their bodies to science. It turns out that the cadaver I had dissected was the body of a respected physician who had practiced medicine for 45 years. The emotions I felt at this were so complex. Gratitude, sadness, joy, admiration, and that doesn't even begin to describe it. I was sitting at a table with two other female classmates and one male professor.
 
One of the girls (sitting across from me) began to cry first. She sat there for about a minute just wiping under her eyes with her index finger, over and over. Then when she saw me looking, she gave me a little smile, then put her elbow on the table and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She stayed like this for about ten minutes and wiped each tear from right under her eyes.
 
I had teared up at the same time as her, but I had successfully blinked them back. But when I heard the other girl stifle a sob, I lost it. My eyes blurred and I felt tears slip down my face and onto my arms. My lips were quivering a lot. I breathed mostly through my mouth but sniffled lightly to keep my nose from running. As I looked down to pull my handkerchief from my bag, a tear dropped down to the tip of my nose, which I brushed away. When I cry at home or in front of friends I usually let the tears roll, but I think sitting in front of a professor made me self conscious. So, I wiped each tear midway down my cheek, by brushing the back of my index finger upward where the tear was, and then wiping my wet finger on the handkerchief. I cried like this, on and off, over the next half hour. I must have shed 15-20 tears, two or three of which made it all the way down my cheek. I kept a straight face through most of it, but then they showed us these beautiful cards that had been made for the families, and asked us to write a small thank you note in them, I did lose control of my lips. I'm sure I had a BLT for thirty seconds while I was writing. When the event was over, I went to the bathroom to assess the damage to my makeup and blow my nose, but it was way too crowded so I just left after mingling for a while.

When I got home, I got distracted reading some mail and didn't look at myself until much later, when my gf arrived and amusedly shoved a mirror into my hands. There was a very slightly dark streak of eyeliner/mascara coming from the outer corner of my eye all the way down my left cheek. I hadn't even seen it in my small makeup mirror and I had not felt it. You miss just one tear, and you start looking like a sad clown. At times like this I wish I had male tear ducts.

This post is too long so I'll stop with the details unless you'd like more. But I did see several guys crying as well as many many other women.

Last edited by truffle (October 3, 2013 6:31 pm)