Departures

Last night a couple friends and I gathered at a small, historic theater here in Nashville called the Belcourt. It’s a captivating place, which drowns you in a sort of nostalgia of the senses. The smell and sights of old wood, of screens flanked by ornate draperies and gilded carvings cause you to feel as though you are about to experience something other-worldly, something void of time or reality in a way. And, yet, the quirky rotation of artwork in the foyer brings you to moments of giddiness as you realize how very ironic it all is. The old and the new converging like they do here? It's Nashville epitomized.

I had been waiting to see Departures for a few weeks and had convinced these friends of mine to join me. But, out of an odd turn of events and scheduling conflicts, the gang of many became a small party of three.

We purchased our tickets and headed into the theater, purposely missing the previews for Jeff’s fear that we’d be sucked back into the belly of the whale that is the Belcourt and find ourselves here again for the next consecutive weeks to follow. [I snuck a peek at one of the previews and am now obsessed with watching an upcoming French film the title and viewing schedule I have no inkling of an idea about. I confess: I have an addiction… My name is Annie and I love movies.]

I was ill-prepared for the movie. It struck chords and unearthed things in me I had thought I’d tucked away so neatly, so deeply, that I would be unmoved by what we were about to experience.

I was so very wrong!

The unassuming movie about a young man’s struggle with losing one passion and finding another was captivating. His unresolved familial issues, however, undid me. I wasn’t expecting a movie about a mortician’s assistant to move me so, to rip apart the poorly stitched tears in my heart, but it did.

I thought of my father.

Like the main character, I often find myself forgetting his face. It’s been more years than I can remember since my brother or I have heard from him. The only pictures I have lie hidden in a box back home in Philadelphia where most of my memories reside.

He is, in many ways, a lifetime away.

Lately, I have been reminded of his absence. I look back to recent pictures I’ve taken with friends here and see him in me - the way his eyes would scrunch, the way deep furrows would appear around his mouth whenever he smiled. These things, these and his hands, are all I have of him now. And I stare in a sort of disbelief, a sort of bewilderment that numbs me to the core.

A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet…

I think of him on occasion. Of all the things he’s missed out on and will miss out on because of the foolish decisions he’s made. Birthdays. Weddings. Births. Grandchildren. Great-Grandchildren. And, it grieves me.

On bad days, I would rather erase him from my life (memory) completely, days when I hate even the sound of my surname. A name that has proven to bring much delight and pages of puns for some friends of mine. [I don’t mind, really, as they can (on occasion) be quite amusing.]

Sure, there are days I find myself daydreaming of the day when I will take on another’s (name) and it brings a sigh of bittersweet relief… momentarily. Yet, these three little letters (C, H and O) are my only connection to him. And, to finally let them go?

I can’t even begin to imagine the loss.