I watched the movie The Bachelors on Amazon Prime yesterday and I shared the trailer in a post yesterday and I do not want to spoil it for those who may want to watch it, so if so stop reading here (Spoiler Alert!).
In the movie both the father and son are suffering the loss of both wife and mother.. The father’s solution is to take the son away for a new start the sad thing being he has to deal with his feelings.. He takes a job as teacher at a new school with his son and then he is advised to get therapy by his headmaster.. This becomes very triggering for me to watch as he is put on several types of anti depressants by his therapist who then recommends ECT when he wont move through, cry or let go of the feelings.. I must confess to getting highly reactive when a so called ‘professional’ claims that moving on and processing a loss should take only one year or it is pathological, after all a new loss compounds so many others. In my case the first loss was of my older sister moving home and then of seeing each sibling move and marry and leave me.. So that when I got injured and nearly died, saw my sister collapse from an aneurysm and then be abandoned by her husband and then try to take her life only to have my Dad then die and be sent away overseas with nothing processed to imply that process would take only a year is ridiculous.
Sorry for confabulating things here.. But anyway I will press on,
In the movie obviously the son struggles on alone.. His father is so wrapped up in his own pain the son’s pain does not figure.. He is told to use rigourous exercise to cope and then in an act of strange synchronicity is asked by his French teacher to help a female student who is a ‘cutter’ and suffers in a family in which the relationship between both her father and mother is incredibly abusive and toxic.
As the ECT progresses for the father and his failed attempts to begin a new relationship fail due to his fear of and guilt about letting go of his wife, the son becomes more and more abandoned frustrated and angry.. There is a poignant scene towards the later end of the movie where the son confronts his Dad over dinner throwing things at the wall in an effort to get his father to see HIS PAIN..
My gosh this was triggering I have sat so many hours by both sister’s bedsides holding their hands in their numbed out by doctors states which were an attempt at control or getting them to ‘move on’ while never really addressing the underlying injury or wound. That said was it the doctor’s fault or the persons for not being braver?.
We all have our own unique pathway to tread in the after math of loss, grief, or trauma. I do honor someone’s right to hold on even after death if that is their path but the person may then end up on an archetypal level like the figure of Orpheus in the myth where his doomed lover Eurydus becomes turned into a pillar of salt from his own failure to exit the underworld without looking back in unrequited grief pain and longing for too long. The creative solution to this is spoken of in one Al Anon reading which recommends we deal with our past longings, loss, grief and trauma by looking back BUT NOT STARING..
A too long period of being captured energetically in the Underworld by a traumatic experience of interpersonal loss may lead to the person suffering it’s life being arrested completely or alternatively descending into the hell realms of addiction and self medication.. Some may never be able to move through to joy again or be able to put the loss into a larger context. For me, I only have some empathy for this knowing how trapped I have often become in a painful past to the point I felt extreme survivor guilt for moving on.
I followed someone for a while trapped in this kind of state and he did not take kindly to it when I wrote a poem about him drowning his sorrows in alcohol and using that to confirm a nihilisitic view of a godless universe. Me being me I took the poem down pretty mcuh immediately after I posted it as it hit me in the gut knowing it may not be kind at all to have written it. It was only up for about 20 minutes but not for so short a time for him not to write a post about me being a self righteous ‘broad’. Fair enough. I did apologise to him later.
Anyway the son losing it with his father in the movie is just the catalyst the father needs to live again and put his loss behind him. How I wish it could have been that way for my sister. I still hold out hope but I am no longer screaming at others about it like I did last August.. Her son didn’t take kindly to the expression of frustration which I get on one level but annoys me on another. Looking back 8 months later more objectively I see now how frustrated I was and how I took that out on them.. That said no one is perfect, least of all me..
Seeing that movie yesterday made me realise sometimes maybe its a good thing to scream our lungs out or throw a plate of dinner against the wall and not a sign of any kind of madness, more of just being a suffering human under a great deal of emotional stress while not getting much support.. In the end the ‘scream’ brings both father and son closer together.. So ultimately the son expressing honestly and intensely how he felt did bear positive fruit and was far better than him just strangling in his feelings.
Emerging From The Dark Night 