Campfyre Stories

…until we were halfway through the Bucket List.

10 minutes before the movie ended, it wasn’t the grief in the movie that hit me, but the humor and I started sobbing silently.  Wracked with physical sobs, tears streaming down my face, the only sound I made in the theater was that of blowing my nose.

To tell the whole truth, the light humor in this movie about a dark subject…  this is how it went for us with Dad.  He joked until the end, so we did, too.  It had to be funny because that’s what his whole life was about.

I think, that had I realized what day it was, I would have suggested that we see a movie NOT about people dying of cancer.  Had I realized what day it was, I might have warned the other 5 people who didn’t know me a year ago and not put Princess in the position of having to explain why I was so lost in my emotions that I couldn’t even really move or put on my coat, let alone talk about it.

And I wish I could have explained that it was not only ok, but good for me to have that reaction.  That it wasn’t unhealthy and, while unexpected, it wasn’t too much.  That I’m fine and please keep laughing because, in my family, we don’t do solemn very well or for very long.  That I don’t want to be cajoled or comforted or any of that sort of thing in a movie theater.  That it was the shock of how fitting it was to see this movie, on this day, and not any kind of unresolved emotions or repression that caused me to break like that.  That it was the humor in the movie and the lessening of it in my daily life that made me cry, so much more than the grief.

But I didn’t come away from it feeling judged.  If there was an uncomfortable moment, it’s not one that I feel I need to apologize for and I think that it’s more a situation of others not really knowing quite what to do.  And what they did - just letting me have that moment and then moving on - was exactly the right thing to do.

So I came home and got in touch with someone that I hadn’t seen in a year and hadn’t talked to in a couple months.  I think it was something that we both needed.  And I sent an email to my father’s widow because I knew that she needed to be reached out to a little, too.

But I still wish that I had realized what day it was earlier, and not gotten blindsided by it.