And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.
Going to the movies was a favorite activity for Michael and me. Even when streaming services became popular, allowing you to see movies in the comfort of your own home with your own microwave-popped popcorn, we preferred the big screen, movie popcorn, and the reactions of others all around us. When the theaters added reclining seats, including armrests that lifted to make the seats into a love seat, so much the better. I’ve yet to experience heated seats, which I’ve heard are out there, but I look forward to it.
In particular, Michael and I loved what we called writer movies. These could be movies based on books by favorite writers, or movies where the main character was a writer. Often, after seeing the movie in the theater, we’d buy it on DVD (again, before streaming) so we could enjoy it and discuss it another time. Soon after Michael and I moved in together, he introduced me to a movie called Jake’s Women, starring Alan Alda, where he played a writer whose characters came to life and talked to him. A writer movie with Alan Alda…heaven!
Since Michael died, I’ve been to several movies, usually in the company of my son Andy and my daughter Olivia. But recently, a movie came out called The Friend. I saw the preview the first time I went to a movie alone, and when I saw that it was a writer movie, I knew I had to go. When the movie showed up in our theaters, it had a shockingly low number of showtimes, so I knew it wouldn’t be staying long. This last weekend, both my son and daughter were unable to come with me, so I went alone to my first writer movie without Michael.
I knew that the movie was about a writer whose best friend had died and left her his gigantic dog, a Great Dane. I didn’t know that the best friend was a writer too, and both of these writers were also teachers, which of course, parallels my life with Michael. The dog, Apollo, was up to his haunches in grief, along with the writer who was left behind.
At one point, the dead writer’s wife says, “How do you explain death to a dog? He sits by the door every day, waiting for Papa to come home.”
Our dog, Ursula, knew Michael as Daddy. Ten months after Michael’s death, Ursula comes downstairs every morning and sits in front of Michael’s recliner, facing it, staring at it. In the evening, she stands by our front windows, watching for Michael to come out of the bus station.
Ten months.
I went to a relatively late movie, 9:40. This theater allows you to choose your seats when you buy your tickets, and I bought mine before anyone else had. I chose my favorite seat. When I arrived at the theater, there were only two other people there, and they were in my same row. There was only one seat between us. When I sat down, they got up and moved to a new area. I wondered if they’d snuck in from another movie.
I think I was only about ten minutes into the movie when the tears started. I sat with the armrest down; there was no need to raise it. But Michael was so missing. The grieving dog, the grieving writer, the dead writer, ohmygod, I was suddenly immersed in it.
At some point, the other two people left. They were not in the theater when the movie ended. I never saw them go. At first, I couldn’t get up and leave. I just sat there, staring at the empty screen. One of the ushers came in and asked me if I was all right.
“No,” I said. “But it’s okay. I will be.”
I will be.
I explained to the usher that the movie hit me more than I thought it would, that my husband and I are/were writers, and that Michael passed away last June. He sat down next to me. Not in the seat Michel would have been in, I noticed, but to my left. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “What was your husband like?”
What a nice young man. We talked for a while, and when I left, walking out into the chilly almost-midnight air, my tears were gone. The young man waved at me, and he was whistling as he began to sweep.
But here’s the thing.
That movie was the best damn movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Even if my situation wasn’t what it is, this movie would have entered my bloodstream and just left me fully involved and invested in what was going on on the screen. I felt for the writer. I felt for the dog. I felt for the dead writer.
And because of my situation, I then felt for Michael and for Ursula. And for me.
I will watch the movie again when it’s out on streaming. When I got home that night, I ordered the book, which is by Sigrid Nunez. It arrived on Monday, and I am now deep in it, and I am just as wowed by the book as I was by the movie. This is a movie that Michael and I would have talked about for days. But even without him here, I know what he would have said. I know what I would have said.
The conversation is happening anyway. Despite the empty seat.
Some people would wonder why I let myself be “triggered”. First off, I didn’t know fully what the movie was about. But if I had, I would have gone anyway – it was a writer movie. I also didn’t leave when I realized the storyline. I deliberately do not avoid “triggers”, because the more I learn, the more I experience, the more I am exposed to people who have experienced the same thing – and survived! – the more I see that I’m going to be okay too. The more I witness other people’s strength, the more I realize my own.
I’ll be okay, I said to that nice usher. And – spoiler alert – the writer and the dog in the movie end up okay too. I am following in their footsteps.
And I think I want to adopt a Great Dane.
(By the way – that usher? I feel like I am reminded over and over again about the goodness of the majority of people on this planet, even in the midst of all the chaos we’re witnessing. As long as there are people like that young usher, asking me if I’m okay, and then sitting down beside me to talk, the world is going to be fine.)
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
