I'm a far 'cry' from normal

On Sept. 14, a 72-year-old woman was struck by a pickup on a major Peterborough street. The initial police report that crossed my desk listed her condition as critical. Within an hour, a second release tersely passed on the news that the woman had died.
For one of the very few times I can remember, I choked up. In this business, over more than 27 years now, a lot of tragedy has befallen my ears. I've interviewed survivors of terrible misfortunes and family members of people lost suddenly under the most dire of circumstances.
Back in the mid '80s in Whitby, just before Christmas, I spent time with a man who lost his wife and children in a brutal car crash on the west coast. I held it together then and have held it together most times since. But since April 29 of this year -- the day my Dad died in Toronto -- I've found the slightest thing sets me off. Maybe it's part of the grieving process, maybe in my case it's the entire grieving process, but I can't stop from crying whenever some misfortune is presented. It's getting so bad that I'm afraid to watch baseball highlights lest someone makes a fielding error.
It's all very strange. I've never been terribly emotional. Now that's all I am. I can't help but think this transformation is somehow tied in with my own loss. The frustrating thing is Dad would have an answer for me or at least some advice, like "Suck it up." Now I don't have that. And that makes me wanna, well, cry.