The Shootist, Super News, and Sadness

Suzanne is at the adult session of Stake Conference up in Joliet, the girls are all in bed, and I'm here half-watching The Shootist, John Wayne's final picture. For the last few weeks of my film class, we're focusing on major Hollywood genres. We've done musicals and melodrama, and now it's time for some manliness with Westerns this week and Film Noir next week.



There is very good news in the world. My mom visited with her oncologist earlier this week and he said he can't find a single trace of cancer in her body. She's gone from having terminal, stage four cancer to not having any evidence of it in her at all. The doctor said that 98 or 99 percent of everyone who gets the kind of cancer she had die of it quickly. Instead, my mom has actually gone into what appears to be remission. The doctor labeled it "miraculous." I talked to her the day she got the news and she sounded so happy and enthusiastic, it was wonderful to hear.

On another note, I need to retract something I wrote about a month ago. I said this blog wasn't going to turn into an ongoing rumination on my dad's death and that I find people who talk about their dead parents "boring." Mostly, I was trying to convince myself that I wouldn't need to write or talk about it on an ongoing basis. Plus, I didn't think that any of the five or six people who read this thing would want to hear me whining. Grief is hard to experience but it's also uncomfortable to read about when it's coming from someone else. Naked sorrow (like any other kind of nudity) generally makes regular folks a little antsy.

The fact is that I need to be able to talk and write about what I'm experiencing. Frankly, I'd rather not but I need to. There are days when I feel when I feel like my insides are being squeezed by a giant hand. There are nights when I feel alone in the universe. Some days things are just bad and that's all there is to it. I've developed this weird tick in my neck - I twitch when I think about what happened to my dad or when something reminds me of that night.



I tried talking to a therapist. She had a PhD in analytical psychology and, after ten minutes of me telling her about Dad and about my childhood, she explained that my tick was probably the result of repressed anger at my parents over raising me in such a sexually repressive church. After thoughtful, insightful help like that, I decided I didn't need to visit her ever again.

What I've found is that my grief just sort of compounds everything else. A day when I might normally have been sad or discouraged feels practically cataclysmic. A bump in the road like Maryn losing her glasses or the van needing new brakes seems like a sign of the last days.

(Side note: I just laughed out loud watching The Shootist. John Wayne's character, a gunfighter dying of cancer, falls while taking a bath. Lauren Bacall, his landlady and friend, goes in to help him. As she's helping him up and giving him another towel, he says, "Hell! Damn!" She says, "John Bernard, you swear too much." Without missing a beat, he says, "The hell I do." Made me laugh.)

Anyway, I guess my point is I don't want to pretend like everything's fine. It's not and I don't know when it will be. I don't like not knowing. The thing is, part of why I'm having such a tough time is that Dad was always the one who assured me that things would be okay. He wasn't big on rah-rah pep talks but his practicality and his perspective always shrunk my fears down to size. He was always plainspoken and direct and had a way of calming me down when I thought the world was going to end. Now, here I am facing this massive internal crisis and, wouldn't you know it, he's not around to help.

There was a time when I was attending ISU and my life had pretty much fallen apart. I was failing classes, was an emotional mess, and was moving home to Rexburg as part of my efforts to salvage what had become of my post-mission life. Dad knew I was in the dumps and he said, "Well, why don't we go someplace before you move home? Where do you want to go?" He suggested a road trip and so we took four or five days and went up to Couer d'Alene, Moscow, Wallace, and Boise. We talked a lot and it wasn't as though Dad said some kind of magic words that changed my life but just the fact that he was there, he was supportive, he wanted to help and did what he could really did make things better. It's kind of selfish but that's a big part of what I miss. I miss Dad helping me feel better when times are bad.

The frustrating thing is that there is no neat, tidy answer to all this. I can't end this post saying, "But now I know everything's going to be fine in time." I suppose it will but but that's something my brain knows, not necessarily something my heart feels, you know?

So, instead, let me just say this: The Shootist is pretty good. Obviously, John Wayne playing a Western hero dying of cancer even as he was actually dying of cancer adds a lot of gravity to the viewing experience. It's a character piece and not an action film by any stretch. It is definitely a shift away from more classical Westerns that were about bringing civilization, order, and honor to the wilderness. The Shootist is a meditation on the passing away of old myths. Nuanced is not usually a word one associates with John Wayne but his performance really is pretty layered and great to watch. It's not a happy ending but it's a good movie.