by Gail Kismet

Created on: February 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

The first time that I can remember seeing a man cry I was 16 years old. The man had a white beard that so long he could have been an impostor for Santa Clause. He had piercing blue eyes, and he was wearing a suit. He stepped up to me, looked directly into my eyes, grabbed one of my hands with both of his and softly said to me, "You have my sincerest condolences."

The man was one of my grandfather's best friends. His nickname was Red Beard, and as the color drained from his beard, due to age, he became known simply as Beard. He's been an extended part of my family for as long as I can remember, and he was one of the toughest men I'd ever met.

He rode a Harley Davidson, like my grandfather did. They were two of the oldest coots I'd ever seen straddle a bike, but, even in their late fifties and early sixties, they still knew how to party like a 20 year old. They were from a generation that believed in working hard and saving everything and not wasting anything. This is how they viewed life. They were never too old to have a good time.

Over the years of riding together, they formed several friendships with several other bikers (most of whom were half their age). They went to Daytona Bike Week together. They went to Sturgis together. They went to several festivals and rode in countless poker rides together. Red Beard and my grandfather were seemingly cut from the same thread.

Growing up in a family whose love for adventure and Harleys equaled the love we had for each other taught me so many lessons. I learned that stereotypes can be wrong. I never really saw bikers as bad asses, because I saw the fun side of them. Despite the fact that I wasn't afraid of them the way some people are, I knew they weren't sissies. They were rough and tough men. They had each other's backs. They were strong and rarely wrong. They cursed like sailors and drank like fish. They did a lot of things, but one thing they never did was cry.

Seeing Red Beard's tears fall down his face jolted me. It shook me to my core. In his eyes was a true sadness that day, in that funeral home. Because, the reason Red Beard was crying was the untimely demise of my grandfather.

Red Beard was the first of many biker friends of my grandfather's to openly weep in front of his casket that night. I expected the biker's wives to cry, but I didn't expect to see these tough men that I'd known since I was a little girl to bury their faces in their hands and sob and heave in front of a room full of people. It remains, to this day, to be an experience I'll never forget.

The tears were all dried the next day as 40 bikes preceded the hearse to the cemetery. After my grandfather was buried they all piled into the local legion hall and popped a few beer tops. Their eyes would get watery as they recalled adventures with the old man, but they never shed another tear. Mostly they laughed.

I saw Red Beard last week. He told me he'd found pictures of Grandpa and he let a tear fall as he recalled the times the pictures were taken. Even as he retold me the story his eyes became filled with tears. I hugged him and he cried on my shoulder.

Yes. Real men cry. Real, tough men cry. Because under all that toughness is a heart that beats, a soul that loves, and a mind that remembers.

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