Your brain has a funny way of protecting you, at least for a little while, when you hear bad news in a place where it’s not the best place for you to begin breaking down.
I can tell you this from personal experience. One day in 2016, I got a call from one of my sisters that my mother had passed away in her sleep the previous night.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t move, I didn’t say anything through most of the phone call. I was also in a grocery store waiting on a prescription. I had ten minutes to wait until the prescription was ready.
Somehow, for the next ten minutes that I was in the store, I was fine. I was waiting in line at the pharmacy counter, even cracking jokes with the pharmacist. I have no idea how I managed to do it. It was only when I got on the phone with my wife to tell her that my brain said it was fine to stop holding myself together.
It’s funny what the brain allows people to endure for as long as they need to endure it.
Take for example the folks on the news who have to report on horrible tragedies or deaths. Sometimes these deaths might remind the reporter of someone they know, sometimes it is someone they knew personally.
Recently, there was one such case of this and to be honest I have no idea how this woman managed to hold it together while the red light was on.
A news anchor for a television station in India was in the middle of a broadcast when a report came across that she had to read about a fatal car crash.
However, as the words began going across the teleprompter and pictures of the accident began flashing on the monitor it became all too clear.
The fatality being reported on was her husband.
Somehow, she managed to keep it together long enough to continue the report. The entire television station only found out about who the victim was at the same time the news anchor did as well.
Reports from the newsroom indicated that she kept it together until they were off the air. If viewers at home weren’t told later, they would have had no idea the victim was her husband.
It’s a horrible siteuation, but it’s amazing what the brain can do when we need it to the most.
