March 2010:
There are lots of books about family members dying—good ones, too—and there are lots of movies about the same thing—some are good and some aren’t. I don’t remember my age when I first watched Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, but I remember all the other circumstances. I had never seen an R-rated movie before and we had recently moved to Arizona (maybe I was 10). I was home and it was a Saturday night, and Mom had rented Ordinary People. I don’t know why—she had seen it, as had my dad. But Mark and I hadn’t, and I wonder if that was the reason. She denies that she eagerly showed us any R-rated movies, but she doesn’t remember things like that well. Mark and I watched it, with Mom and Dad, and it ended late. The film is about the aftermath of a family tragedy in which the beloved son and brother was killed, and the brother who survived has suicidal tendencies, and the mom has anger and denial issues. The movie trafficked in some emotions that seemed pretty heavy at the time, and complicated enough that they surprised me even while convincing me that this kind of reaction to trauma was real. I was not traumatized by its “adult content,” which consisted of some emotionally-laden expletives and painful comments, I was enthralled by it. I periodically looked over at Dad while the movie was on, and he had a confused look on his face. I never knew what that meant, but I didn’t care. It was, as it was playing, the best movie I had ever seen, the deepest, most surprising, and raw thing that I could ever experience, totally different than what I would get at Church or school. Those things were assuring, and this was unsettling. I went to bed but I didn’t sleep. I stayed wide awake thinking about it until I couldn’t anymore, until I had to get up and draw pictures, which I did, in the middle of the night. I drew pictures of a father and a son hugging on porch steps, the last scene of the film.
The next morning at Church, especially in Sunday School, I found everything trite. How could these people take such a simple view of the world? How could they possibly be so content in the midst of trauma, the human condition, death? I wanted to go back home and think and sulk and feel deeply about things. I don’t think I ever did go home to do those things—the reality was probably similar to every other Sunday after church: sneaking in the pantry, stealing graham crackers and then going to my room, closing the door and eating them on the far end of my bed. But that doesn’t mean the desire to think and sulk and feel deeply ever left. That desire persists, to some extent, although now that desire is mixed with fear.
I sometimes credit Ordinary People as the initiatory cognitive dissonance in my life. When we create our own narratives, we need one of those moments even if the process of living was probably much more nuanced. I don’t really think Ordinary People was that thing, but it was important anyway. Shortly after I got married, I rented it again to watch with Kathryn. I wasn’t as impressed with the film, although I still admired the acting, but I am not sure that matters. How did I know that the trite thing was probably the film and the deep thing probably Church? What did I know about my dad’s confused look while he was watching it? For me, it was profound, like an introduction to a world that could only be accessed outside of my experience. To be accessed through art, literature, movies.
Maybe Ordinary People doesn’t hold up, but my memory of it always will. When I recently watched it with Kathryn, I was disappointed to find that the last scene of the movie, the son hugging the father, was pretty different from how I remembered it. That was the scene that I drew in the middle of the night and the scene that I carried with me as imagistic evidence that people feel love beyond any identification. That scene was, for a while, my reference point for grief.
When Dad died, my reference point for grief changed. It is now something else, but my memory of the final scene, a mixture of what actually happened on screen and my own invention, still resonates. The final lines of the film, as I remember and which are, in fact, “I love you” and “I love you too.” A movie should never end with those lines unless it has earned them, but I feel that the father and the son speaking those lines earned them. I think my dad and I earned them. Maybe my reference point for grief hasn't really changed.
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