A movie on elderly caretaking, that made the writer connect to the characters’ experiences, and what the writer came to understand, about life, and growing older, translated…
Seventy-three days after my mother passed, my older brother wrote on FB of his missing her:
“An elderly woman who came in to get treated in a wheelchair, complained of aches and pains all over, and, I’d examined her, and told her, that after she gets treated, she’d feel, a whole lot better, the daughter started ranting incessantly, to the point of doubting that her mother was not really experiencing the physical aches and pains; I’d told her, that the elderly needed more attention! Actually, I was thinking of our mother cried out in pain, of how as our parents are gone, we’d come, to the realizations, that we didn’t, do right by them…it’s a huge blessing, for the children, to have both their parents still living!”
the preview clips of the movie, off of YouTube...
This article reminded me of an Italian film, “Sweet Dreams”, the male lead was Massimo, a male newspaper reporter, at age nine, his mother passed abruptly, and it’d become this huge shadow in his life, that he couldn’t let go of. One day he’d received a reader, Simon’s letter, in it, there were, the complaints of his mother, how the long-term care burdens are, weighing him down, and how he’d, hated being the sole care provider. The editor told Massimo to write a reply back to the reader, to express his own emotions, that after he’d written that letter of response, don’t look back again.
Massimo wrote Simon bac, told him of the panic and despair he’d felt, at age nine when he’d lost his own mother, that every time, he’d arrived home, he’d always thought, he could still find his mother, in the kitchen with the radio blasting on, and in sleep, in the darkness, he’d wanted to, make sure, that his mother was, sitting by his bed, watching over him. And, as he got older, he’d, stopped, talking about, and missing his mother, and he couldn’t, give love to anybody, because he didn’t want to, feel the pains again. And now, he’d come to know, that the pain will surface, again.
He hoped that Simon can understand, how blessed he was, to have his mother, how he got to ask, “mom, are you there?” when he got home, and, hearing the replies. His elders told him, that the final thing his mother did before she died, was, pulling the covers on him, and wished that he has a sweet dream, but he was asleep, and, didn’t know that. Massimo told Simon, maybe, his mother cared about him too, but he had yet to notice it, or couldn’t understand it yet, or maybe, he’d, forgotten. Love always gets expressed in the hidden forms, and, we only remember the upsets. If you can, go and hug your mother now, you wouldn’t lose anything, and maybe, it’d, surprise her, to the point of, making her tearing up, who knows?
I’d once felt like Simon had, since after I finished the course of life by my mother in its finality, I’d felt especially deep of the scenes of parting ways through death. Although, I’m inclined to believe, that my mother is, in a, better place, and continued her love for us in an alternative plane of reality, but I can’t see her, and feel her, or touch her, and it’d, made me feel the loss, and, at this time, if we had siblings, we can share our sentiments of missing our parents for support, it would be, healing.
With this article, dedicated, to my own, mother.
And so, this, is on, how this individual found resolve, how s/he started to, finally let go, of her/his own, mother’s, death, and, the story from the movies, it’d offered us, two different perspectives, of how the newspaper reported lost his own mother, and longed for her love so much, with the man who wrote in about how he’d hated his own mother, for giving him a difficult time, of how burdensome his responsibilities of taking care of her is, offering the sharp contrasts of the two characters’ lives.
Life, the Obstacle Course 