I am sitting in one of the most peaceful places I have been in a long time, upstate NY, at my boyfriends parents house.  I am looking out the window at a small lake, the leaves starting to turn into the glory we all wait for this time of year. This one will be short, as I am on vacation, but wanted to share some thoughts on a movie we watched last night, Manchester by the Sea.

We both have wanted to watch it after it won so many awards.  I knew some of the premise of the movie, knowing it had sad parts, so prepared myself.  As usual, it was so much more. I am going to write about it, so spoiler alert. The main character Lee was distant, angry, and did not let people get close to him. He found out his brother died suddenly and went home to take care of all the arrangements and his nephew.  He found out that his brother had left him to take care of his nephew, who was 16.  There was this back story the viewer wanted to learn about as people whispered in town, that’s Lee Chandler, really?  The Lee Chandler?

You watched him try to deal with all the doings and proceedings after a death, and wrestling with the decision to be his nephews guardian, saying he couldn’t do it. You see him flashing back to his past and seeing him happy at one time with a wife and three young children.  You wondered, where are they? That must have been a nasty divorce for him to act the way he does.  You did not expect what the real truth was.

This is where my mind started tripping a bit and the top to the emotional vault got a bit unsteady. He had a party in his basement and his wife came down and threw a justified fit at 2am and kicked everyone out.  He put a fire on in the basement to warm up the house and went out for some more beer. He thought, hmm, did i put the screen on the fireplace?  But trudged on then back in the snow to find his house in flames and his wife struggling against the firemen to go back in and save the kids. At that point Lee changed.

All the emotions he should have felt, he didn’t, he was numb and disassociated.  When they took the body bags of the children out of the fire, he just stared. When the police questioned him on the events of the night, he was like, thats it?  Are you not going to arrest me?  He then walking out, tried to grab a gun and kill himself. So he left town, and got a job as a janitor living in a sparse room, distancing himself from the world and the memories of his past.

Watching him, watching that pain, the grief, the distance, the anger brewing on the surface, the total numbness that he encased himself in, how the littlest thing set him off, watching him live a life punishing himself. I resonated. I felt it all. The tears brimming in my eyes, knowing. Looking at those body bags, remembering. Knowing from a level that one should not know. He said at the end to his nephew, after he signed over guardianship to his friend, I’m sorry, I just can’t beat it.

I fear. I have said this before. I fear for the day that Bellas grief will bubble over to the surface and stay. I fear breaking from that. I fear for experiencing and living the way he did, for how else could I?  How else could I live with that pain of losing her the way I did. My body, mind, spirit, soul, has been tested and pushed over the past three years.  I have been on the floor wondering what was the purpose, why, how can I live with this?  Raffi was is the answer. And living. And teaching. And trying to prevent this madness from happening to another.

So, Manchester by the Sea.  If you want to know and try to understand what traumatic grief does to you, watch it. If you want to understand why I just don’t feel so much of the time. Watch it. If you wonder why I keep fighting the way I do to prevent going down the rabbit hole, watch it. Watch why I keep that grief for her so locked up.

View from the deck