Maybe it's the stress of this past week at work...or finding an old picture of me taken during the camp session where the CSA happened...or just realizing that my kids are growing up....but....

I was listening to music on my iPod when "Puff the Magic Dragon" came up. I hadn't heard that song in years (and it always made me sad). By the middle of the song, I was sitting in the living room bawling and trying to hide it from the family.

Earlier today I watched "Toy Story 2" with my kids and just about lost it at the part where the girl forgets Jessie and gives her away.

The common theme here is the loss of innocence...which needs no additional commentary from me.

Will

I hear ya buddy!!!

That's not fair to yourself. The throw-away scene in Toy Story 2 is weaponized sadness, the animators wound even joke that they judged the internal success of the scene by how many execs in suits they could break apart in test screenings. It kinda doesn't count.

The rest, though.... I know what you mean, and it's for the best. Especially that picture.

Interestingly, another song that gets me is the John Williams & Yo-Yo Ma performance of "Sayuri's Theme." It is from 'Memoirs of a Geisha'---which I care nothing about. This song is great though.

It features the piano and cello, which I find to be relaxing to the point of transcendence...and it reminds me of being very young and playing records that my grandparents had of some really interesting music.

I'm 7 or 8 and sitting on the floor of my grandfather's home office in my grandparents' Atlanta bungalow. I'm sorting through old records that belonged to him---and a few from my great-uncle who went down on a submarine in the Pacific during WWII. I don't know what happened to those records, but they were unusual finds among the amazing, but expected Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.

Will

Oh, Will! I thought I was the only guy who cries hearing Puff the Magic Dragon. No wonder, however - it's a rare theme for a song to deal with boys growing up. When Puff realizes that boy is never coming back, it hits hard and deep - tears are welling as I think about it.

For me it was Peter Pan. The ending where Peter returns to Neverland, and tells the now adult Wendy that she can never go back there because "...you're too grown up". That got to me in a big way.

Jude

I cry alot during sad movies, especially "The Christmas Shoes" about the boy wanting to buy slippers for his dying mom for Xmas but I also for a long time felt "real men don't cry" and I am glad I am not the only one and my wife knows it because she offers me a kleenex during an emotional movie scene. I tend to hide it from my son though.....I probably shouldn't but I tend to try not to let him see me weeping.

"Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers" from the animated Raggeddy Ann & Andy Movie is my special daddy song when I'm getting my son into PJs or trying to cheer him up if he's sad. I never cried at it, always thought it was sweet. Then when I came completely unglued in the fall and started envisioning / hallucinating his death and funeral, part of the imaginary ceremony was the whole family singing that to the little coffin before we buried him.

Even after I "got better" the song was kind of ruined for me. I still sing it to him but either with the lights out or positioned so if I tear up he won't see.

The "upside" is that if I ever need to self-trigger or whatever, to let more poison out, I sure know how.

Oh, and also the part in the Neverending Story where the kid has a slow horrible desperate meltdown as he helplessly watches his horse slowly drown. Niagara Falls. (There's another scene later in that movie that doesn't make me cry but rather honestly scares the shit out of me ever since the CSA woke up. To be precise it terrified me my whole life but only now do I understand why.)

.

I saw the new version of les mis,

it was deeply moving and i can tell you that if you aren't drenched in tears by the end of the movie, you will be in the company of one. There would be no need to leave, we were all sobbing.

The power of forgiveness, the power of kindness, the power of love was so movingly overwhelming. I sat there and found the comparisons for someone who has suffered as jean val jean did was so similar to survivors. When you have not been shown kindness, and been given the tools to feel and give love, somehow if you are lucky enuff to experience it, it just may be that much sweeter.

The message in the musical was based on the grace given in the name of God but the message is universal. It is love that trumps the darkness, and the unexpected result when one is unexpectedly shown grace and kindness where none is expected.

In my life , I have been very greatful to people I love but because of the all my craziness I have hurt. It would have been easy to live in the hurt forever but compassion, forgiveness and time have allowed us all to find a way back.

The tears will just flow on their own, you can't control it, don't even try. I lose it when clarence gets his wings every christmas when we would all watch "it's a wonderful life".

Its a beautiful thing.