Grieving When You Have Older Children Watching

My husband is home on a two week visit, and even though I have often said I just want him to hold me while cry, I still cry on my own. In theory, I don't really hide it. I usually cannot control the first few tears before I lock the door to the bathroom and sob in the shower or announce I'm going to lay in the bed and "get some of these tears out."  He seems to understand that although I don't want to grieve alone, the outward show of grief is somehow embarrassing for me, and when there are others around, I cannot be true to the grief in all its ugliness.  I need to be able to make noises as I run out of breath, and I need to make those contorted faces that come with the waves that make your stomach actually hurt like a contraction.  The fetal position in a bed isn't pretty, but it is the helpless infant we revert back to.

My husband and my daughter left to go to the store, and I could not join them.  I'm too randomly weepy.

The youngest child is not here, but the oldest is.  My bedroom door was closed, and he knocked.  "Mom."

"What?"  I gargled this word because I had just experienced a breathless contraction in my stomach.

"Can I come in?"

"No, the door is locked."  What I didn't say:  I can't get out of the bed to unlock it.  I don't want you to see my face splotchy, shiny, and wet.  He knows though.

He asked what he wanted to ask through the door, and he got the answer he wanted.  He moved on.

What am I teaching him?  That thought came next.  If I am embarrassed to be seen experiencing this pain, what was I taught growing up?  Or did I not learn this at all and it is more just a personal preference? I think maybe a combination of both, but I also know I need to have a conversation with him and the other kids.  Even if my actions do not match my words, I have to let them know that it is not a rule that one must hide in a room to cry.  There should be nothing shameful in loving others so much that when those others are gone, our face contorts, we can't breathe, and the tears just flow.  I don't know how to bridge that gap of processing this with them and actually showing by example, but I know they are watching. Perhaps the first step is telling, then building up to showing.  Maybe it is tagging them when I share this on Facebook.

I love Chad tremendously and the loss of him hurts me so deeply.  The loss of him brings up earlier losses as well, my mom, my grandpa, my godmother.  I do not want my kids believing that loving someone and losing them means secrecy and isolation.  I welcome suggestions and personal stories of how grief is expressed in your own family.