Thursday, June 15, 2006
Real Life
Growing up, I loved movies. I 'don't remember disliking a single one I saw. In fact, I had trouble understanding why critics picked apart the films that were, for me then, all so different and perfect in their own ways. I spent a good bit of my childhood in Atlanta, and I can remember sometimes walking, and sometimes being dropped off at Lenox Square or Phipps Plaza and paying $2 to see The Pink Panther series (I loved Peter Sellers), Escape to Witch Mountain, Monty Python's Holy Grail, Jaws (which I loved, but which, as the movie trailer and book jacket promised, kept me from ever enjoying the water again.) All of these are classics, except, possibly, Escape to Witch Mountain, which starred Eddie Albert as an RV-driving grump who is won over by two adorable children with magical powers. But I saw several that would be a bit more difficult to praise nowadays: Foul Play, with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, and The Spy Who Loved Me (I had an inexplicable loyalty to Roger Moore as James Bond). I saw this one, and other Roger Moore Bond films, an embarrassing number of times.
Sadly, I didn't hold onto that unconditional adoration of cinema. A college roommate with discriminating taste in movies and music took it upon herself to educate me. Thanks in part to her, I am now much more particular about movies, and have so much less free time, so I find myself too often scouring the reviews to find one that's worth my time. But I guess my joy at finding a great one may equal the happiness I used to find at the theater as a child. It just doesn't happen as often.
One of the repercussions of spending so much time in a dark theater is that aspects of life start to take on characteristics of films I've seen. It's not that I lose my grip on reality, but a frightening number of the connections that my brain makes are to films instead of to books or, sigh, other life experiences. Sometimes it's because I don't have a life reference or an literary moment to refer to. Other times, though, I think it's because movies provide a safe and easy way to experiment with emotions that life and books, which require so much more imagination, don't offer as readily. The result is that some of the important moments of my life have a film-like quality in my memory. I think it's possible that I compartmentalize the strong feelings that come with these real-life events so that they might soften, as would happen when I walked out of the dark theater and squinted into the sunlight after watching a matinee and realized that it was daytime and that the shark was far, far away and I was safe.
I felt this way a couple of days ago watching my grandmother die. It was a surreal forty-eight hours in which my mother and I went to the nursing home in the mountains to visit her, knowing she was ailing, and ended up staying through the end of her life. Afterward, standing next to her lifeless body, so carefully and lovingly laid out on the bed, it just didn't seem real. You see, the whole event had every making of a cinematically scripted occasion.
My grandmother and I have always had a special relationship. I never did anything to earn it, and as a child I felt guilty that she liked me so much and, apart from being named for her, I didn't always merit her special feelings. I didn't visit often enough, and when I did visit, I sometimes dreaded making the trip. But when I would arrive at her house in Alexandria, we always had a wonderful time. She was never one for scheduled activities; she appreciated relaxation, and especially as teenager, I loved lying on her couch eating Captain Crunch out of the box after a day of swimming at her club and lying in the sun. That's about all we did. And maybe because I didn't require more, she enjoyed my company. Over the years, I tried to earn that special relationship we had. I visited as often as I could, and when it came time for her to go to the nursing home, I tried to be a regular presence. I never felt I quite lived up to the kind words she said to me, but it was a lesson for me that thinking the best of someone is a great way to help them raise their own expectations.
I didn't cry much during her death; I knew she wanted to go, and I wanted her suffering to end. A couple of times I felt a sense of deja-vu. Looking back, I wonder if watching the grief of too many characters in too many movies made my experience seem less authentic. From a directorial standpoint, it was quite a beautiful scene: My mother, brother and I stood around the bed and stroked Grandma's arms and hair and told her how much we loved her. After the nurses warned us that the time was rapidly approaching, she breathed shallowly and irregularly for about 30 minutes, and then she just stopped.
Apart from saying goodbye to my grandmother, my goal was to support my mother, for whom this has been very difficult. But when it came time to leave the nursing home, it was she who held me. I had a really hard time walking out of that place. Looking back, it was leaving that made it real -- walking out of the automatic doors of the nursing home into the late afternoon sunlight and realizing that my grandmother was still gone. That her body was still in that bed, and that it wouldn't be there the next morning. I felt myself crumble, and the emotions that I'd held at bay, behind that curtain of fantasy where I'd "tried on" so many feelings in the past, all came tumbling out.
My mother held me close in the parking lot and let me cry. I may have seen fifty sentimental deaths on the big screen, and uncountable moments of grief, but this moment was mine, and it was real, and it was clear and painful and full. And to soften it would be to cheapen it and rob myself of the true essence of what it is to live.
Sadly, I didn't hold onto that unconditional adoration of cinema. A college roommate with discriminating taste in movies and music took it upon herself to educate me. Thanks in part to her, I am now much more particular about movies, and have so much less free time, so I find myself too often scouring the reviews to find one that's worth my time. But I guess my joy at finding a great one may equal the happiness I used to find at the theater as a child. It just doesn't happen as often.
One of the repercussions of spending so much time in a dark theater is that aspects of life start to take on characteristics of films I've seen. It's not that I lose my grip on reality, but a frightening number of the connections that my brain makes are to films instead of to books or, sigh, other life experiences. Sometimes it's because I don't have a life reference or an literary moment to refer to. Other times, though, I think it's because movies provide a safe and easy way to experiment with emotions that life and books, which require so much more imagination, don't offer as readily. The result is that some of the important moments of my life have a film-like quality in my memory. I think it's possible that I compartmentalize the strong feelings that come with these real-life events so that they might soften, as would happen when I walked out of the dark theater and squinted into the sunlight after watching a matinee and realized that it was daytime and that the shark was far, far away and I was safe.
I felt this way a couple of days ago watching my grandmother die. It was a surreal forty-eight hours in which my mother and I went to the nursing home in the mountains to visit her, knowing she was ailing, and ended up staying through the end of her life. Afterward, standing next to her lifeless body, so carefully and lovingly laid out on the bed, it just didn't seem real. You see, the whole event had every making of a cinematically scripted occasion.
My grandmother and I have always had a special relationship. I never did anything to earn it, and as a child I felt guilty that she liked me so much and, apart from being named for her, I didn't always merit her special feelings. I didn't visit often enough, and when I did visit, I sometimes dreaded making the trip. But when I would arrive at her house in Alexandria, we always had a wonderful time. She was never one for scheduled activities; she appreciated relaxation, and especially as teenager, I loved lying on her couch eating Captain Crunch out of the box after a day of swimming at her club and lying in the sun. That's about all we did. And maybe because I didn't require more, she enjoyed my company. Over the years, I tried to earn that special relationship we had. I visited as often as I could, and when it came time for her to go to the nursing home, I tried to be a regular presence. I never felt I quite lived up to the kind words she said to me, but it was a lesson for me that thinking the best of someone is a great way to help them raise their own expectations.
I didn't cry much during her death; I knew she wanted to go, and I wanted her suffering to end. A couple of times I felt a sense of deja-vu. Looking back, I wonder if watching the grief of too many characters in too many movies made my experience seem less authentic. From a directorial standpoint, it was quite a beautiful scene: My mother, brother and I stood around the bed and stroked Grandma's arms and hair and told her how much we loved her. After the nurses warned us that the time was rapidly approaching, she breathed shallowly and irregularly for about 30 minutes, and then she just stopped.
Apart from saying goodbye to my grandmother, my goal was to support my mother, for whom this has been very difficult. But when it came time to leave the nursing home, it was she who held me. I had a really hard time walking out of that place. Looking back, it was leaving that made it real -- walking out of the automatic doors of the nursing home into the late afternoon sunlight and realizing that my grandmother was still gone. That her body was still in that bed, and that it wouldn't be there the next morning. I felt myself crumble, and the emotions that I'd held at bay, behind that curtain of fantasy where I'd "tried on" so many feelings in the past, all came tumbling out.
My mother held me close in the parking lot and let me cry. I may have seen fifty sentimental deaths on the big screen, and uncountable moments of grief, but this moment was mine, and it was real, and it was clear and painful and full. And to soften it would be to cheapen it and rob myself of the true essence of what it is to live.
