THE LUCK IN MY STARS
“That's the thing about pain. It
demands to be felt.”
Gus, The Fault In Our Stars
I
suppose my pain, seemingly an endless reservoir that deepens with age, was
being its demanding self when it read the
New York Times review of The Fault In Our Stars. If you asked, I would say that I need some good head more than I
need a good cry but my pain receptors ordered me to get to the nearest movie
house and purchase my ticket (at a painful senior discount) to the new cancer
movie.
I
chose to go alone rather than subject someone to indulge my histrionics which I
knew would be as predictable as the filmmakers incorporating a gooey montage of
the sweetest moments of the movie as the final moments unravel (along with the
audience).
I find watching a film to be so subjective. I
suppose any artistic experience is but—positioned in that darkened space with
human emotions magnified beyond any sense of reality—my “material” (as they say)
ineluctably merges with the material that those larger-than-life characters are
manifesting.
I’m less emotionally rickety watching something on
the small screen, residing in a less heightened state; that’s why I’ve avoided The Normal
Heart like another colonoscopy. But The
Fault In Our Stars is being compared to Love
Story—good pain, not the torture chamber of AIDS in the Eighties.
Yes and no. Death is death—whether it’s in Venice , New York
While many friends and I played that game—replete
with campy repartee (“If you go first, I promise to get rid of the dildos under
your bed before your parents arrive from Iowa
Speaking of heart-rending movies, a startling
realization struck when Philip and I were seeing Longtime Companion at the Vista Theater. About halfway through the routinely
labeled “AIDS movie”, Philip went to the bathroom. Feeling the suddenness of
his departure, like a throbbing jolt—in
that very moment—I thought to myself, wanting to scream it outloud to the
actors on the movie screen: “He’ll die first.”
One of the most defining aspects of my relationship
with Philip had been travel. Like the star-crossed lovers in The Fault In Our Stars, we chose Amsterdam
Hazel & Gus
Perhaps the most jarring scene in The Fault In Our Stars, the one that
most shockingly mirrored our peregrination to Denmark, was the unexpected visit
that Hazel and Gus take to the Anne Frank House, complicated by the fact that our
screen heroine is gasping for breath, lugging her oxygen tank, navigating the
steep, narrow stairways to the attic as Anne Frank’s words are spoken in
voiceover: “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
Philip and I trudged up those same stairs, both of
us likely thinking something akin to what Gus and Hazel were thinking,
something about the impermanence of life and the gift of having fallen in love
before the fault of our stars would separate us.
At this point, during the movie, I was blowing my
nose with my cardboard popcorn container. Philip would die less than two years
after we visited Amsterdam
The day after I saw the movie, Katherine—my
daughter/the filmmaker—came home from her first year of studies abroad. Since
her taste in film is infinitely more finessed than mine, I knew she would be
appalled that I saw The Fault In Our
Stars.
“Oh, dad,” she groaned. “You’re such a teenage
girl.” I didn’t deny it—even though I did point out to her that I got a senior
discount at the box office.
What I didn't tell her is that the tears that
dampened my popcorn were also tears of ineffable ecstasy. A couple of years
after Philip died, the award in my stars resulted in the adoption of a five
month old baby girl.
In a couple of months, Katherine will no longer be a
teenage girl; to be alive for that? I cannot fault my stars, only thank them.
That’s the thing about joy. It also demands to be
felt.
Katherine & Dad
