Emotions....

   It was brought to my attention last week when in counseling that I tend to not want people to feel their emotions, or tend to feel badly when someone else cries or has any reaction. I think my dear friend S knows this because I would always try to defuse her strong emotions rather than just knowing it is perfectly ok  to feel and express whatever is going on inside!  I had to think about this and look at it since then and just had a light bulb moment i want to write about.  This is what brought this to the fore just now.
   I was writing to S about my visit with mother yesterday.  In an unconventional moment, mother said that she does not expect that my older sister (who has cancer) will ever be back  to visit her. Mother was without any visible emotion. And as i was writing to S about this I realized that my mother has ALWAYS been without visible emotion. She will express political or religious ideas in a bold way, and is also very quick to express criticism, and also can become angry when she does not get her own way, but she does NOT express sadness. 
  Saturday evening my son K called me from the psych hospital he is currently in and spent almost an hour yelling and cursing and threatening to harm himself and others. (this is all behavior consistent with his illness) I deliberately practiced being conscious of what was happening, and analyzed what was taking place so as not to internalize the extreme energy K was generating. When his tirade was over and the call ended, I was very careful not to allow myself to feel anything about it.
   Is this very 'zen' of me? Maybe. Is it very 'zen' of mother  to not express any feelings about her oldest child getting ready to leave her body before she herself does?
   "One should lament neither for the living nor the dead." (Bhag.Gita) See... I have scripture to support my lack of emotion! But if I am this way due to denial, due to not wanting to feel my inner pain, somehow i think i can not apply Shastra to that. It is like trying to be a sanyasi because it sounds good, but not being free of  lust.
   Anyhow... I do not like to feel sadness.. and i do not want anyone else to feel sadness.. but I think this is because i was never allowed to as a child. I was never allowed to grieve the loss of my father at age 5, or  his mother, or anything! My sister Jean says that when one of her babies left her body after 30 days, my mother, who was the only one there, told her to just let it go. Jean says she "was not permitted to grieve."
   I do not want to have painful emotions.