The People in Your Heart Will Make You Cry
I like to consider myself a world-class crier, but I wasn’t always like that. One of the reasons I went into therapy many years ago was that I didn’t shed a tear when my mom died. I thought I was just another regular guy, keeping my emotions bottled up like my father and his father before him, but the truth was that I was petrified to feel the excruciating pain of her loss. Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars later, the floodgates finally opened and they’ve never fully closed.
I cried when I was happy. I cried when I was sad. I cried when I was scared. I cried when I was relieved. I cried when I was alone. I cried when I was with women. Indeed, women have always been able to make me cry, and once or twice it was even for joy.
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that the people in your heart will make you cry—that’s just the way the waterworks work.
But nothing approached the way I cried when Rob died.
It was a feeling I had never felt before and will never feel again. It was the feeling that I was scared to face when my mother died . . . only a million times worse. Rob cracked me wide open, and I sobbed and sobbed, pouring out what was left of my mangled heart.
I cried in my girlfriend Maura’s arms when we first got the news. I cried the moment I saw my younger son Zach and my ex-wife Caryn when I flew into New York for the funeral.
I cried when I saw my close friends Tony and Gina the night before we buried Rob. I cried when I saw my sister and her husband and every one of my friends who attended Rob’s funeral and shiva.
I want to tell you that all my crying felt good, that it was a tremendous relief, but I don’t remember anything like that. I just remember bursting into tears without a thought in my head. I was all feelings and none of them felt good.
Except that they were.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I know it now. I know it because I saw the parents in my grief group weep for almost two years, and I witness other bereaved parents crying in grief groups that I now lead every week. I’ve seen how their tears have helped all of them to process their loss. I’ve seen how people slowly come back to life and transform into better versions of themselves, and it all starts with crying.
Crying is the primal soundtrack to the pain of missing your child, the heavy metal of our heavy hearts. It’s uncontrollable, excruciating, overwhelming, and, above all, indispensable. You must hurt before you heal, and your tears will help repair your soul.
They did for me, and it all started the first night I joined a grief group. Someone had recently dropped out and I dropped in, an official member of the saddest club on the planet. As part of an exercise (and instead of doing what everyone was instructed to do), I asked if I could read something I had written about Rob. I chose a snarky obit, which I thought would be a shorthand way to introduce the group to my son and also because I thought it was funny, not yet understanding that there were not a lot of laughs in that group.
As soon as I began reading it aloud, I choked up.
Robbie Carlat, who could be a pain in the ass but was loved deeply by so many, died on Thursday morning in Long Beach, California. He was twenty eight.
And there I was, bawling just like I did when I read Rob’s eulogy at the funeral. At the time, I wasn’t sure what triggered it, but in retrospect all the things we do to trick ourselves into not feeling the pain don’t work in that room, where our defenses are down and we’re all so raw and vulnerable. It’s the one and only place to share how we’re dealing with our loss where everybody knows exactly what you’re talking about. And I think it may have also been about me hearing those terrible words out loud, which landed with a sickening finality that I hadn’t anticipated.
That said, I still think it’s a good way to tell you a little more about Rob, so here’s the rest of the obit.
His father and spokesperson for the family, Larry Carlat, said the cause was “an unusually ridiculous level of stupidity.”
Robbie Carlat was a restaurant manager for the past seven years, most recently serving as the food and beverage supervisor at Hustler Casino in Gardena, California. Prior to that, he was the manager of Winston Pies in Brentwood. Mr. Carlat was also a competent chef, and his specialties grilled burgers, Philly cheesesteaks, and Buffalo chicken wings—are fondly remembered in Venice Beach and Syosset culinary circles.
Known as “the king of shenanigans,” Mr. Carlat, a bright, charming, and very funny young man, packed a lot of living into his twenty-eight years, though he harbored a darker side and was occasionally self-destructive, according to those who had shared a house with him. “He could be a real fuckin’ idiot sometimes,” said the family spokesperson.
Robbie James Carlat was born on January 18, 1991, in Joplin, Missouri.
He was adopted at birth by Caryn and Larry Carlat. “It was love at first sight,” said the family spokesperson, who spent much of the early days with the younger Mr. Carlat eating crap, yelling at him, and watching inappropriate movies. That pattern, known as “hanging with Rob,” never fundamentally changed in their ensuing years together.
Mr. Carlat grew up in Woodbury, New York, and went to Walt Whitman Elementary School, Thompson Middle School, and Syosset High School. He briefly attended Farmingdale State College before moving to Binghamton, New York, where he sold weed to many of the stoner kids on campus at SUNY Binghamton.
“When Robbie moved in with me in Binghamton, I felt like I got to bring an important piece of home with me,” said Jacob Silverman, a childhood friend who met Mr. Carlat in sixth grade.
Mr. Carlat had many girlfriends over the years but never married. He had no children—that we know of—though not for lack of trying.
“He’d go after any girl, not afraid of the possible rejection, and it was crazy because it worked the majority of the time. He was such a ladies’ man,” said his best friend, Sarah Miller.
Mr. Carlat was a rare combination, according to those who knew him intimately, of heartbreaker and heartbroken.
He is survived by his parents, Larry and Caryn, who declined to be interviewed for this article, his brother Zachary, who also declined to be interviewed but not before adding, “Dad, I don’t feel like crying right now,” and his cat Biscuit, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Larry Carlat is the author of A Space in the Heart: A Survival Guide for Grieving Parents.