Watching "A Man Called Otto"

And how it helped me process my grief...

Tonight I went to see that new Tom Hanks movie, A Man Called Otto. It was a sweet and touching movie. I got emotional at a few points. It brought tears to my eyes.

Unless you have someone close to you who has completed suicide, it probably doesn’t even faze most people.

But when Otto tries (and fails a few times) to complete suicide, they give me pause.

Especially the last time. With the rifle. It makes me think about my father’s last moments. You have to wonder about his mental state, how lucid he was. I wonder how many pills he had taken. How intoxicated he had to have been. How miserable with life and his inability to breathe with his COPID. How much pain he was in, with his permanent injury to his shoulder.

All these things that filled his cup to the point of making it run over.

I wonder what his last moments were. His final thoughts.

I know I have been thinking a lot about him because I saw a photo of him posted on social media the other day that stopped me. And I stared.

I hadn’t been expecting to see a picture of my dad. There aren’t a lot of pictures of him.

But there his face was. It stared back at me.

Those piercing blue eyes, so much like my own.

Those ugly, heavy, Joe-Biden-like-but much worse glasses.

His large-ish nose and ears, so much like my Grandma Donelson’s.

I was struck by his face, how it does resemble my own.

For years I spent many years thinking I only looked like my mother. Many people said I did, that I was the striking image of her.

In many ways I am, with my smile and skin and hair. But my eyes and my nose are my father’s. My face is longer like his was.

I am a pretty decent combo of the two of them. Some people said I resembled Jeremie the most, as we both were a decent mixture of the two of them.

I think about the genes that I won’t pass on. I often think that this is a good thing. I have limited extended family to offer any children, and a weighted history of mental illness and intergenerational trauma. Though I am working hard to break them, it is easier to accept that I have when I know that I will only bear responsibility for potentially hurting another adult if I don’t heal properly, not a child.

I think about the two children I lost. Tonight, as Otto had flashbacks of his wife losing their child when she was six months pregnant, and their moments of shared grief, I thought about my own.

The thing about complex grief and complex PTSD is that I am still processing. The miscarriages are painful, but they were thrown to the back burner because a lot happened immediately afterwards.

One was a month before my mother’s death, followed by my brother’s two months later.

The next one was six months afterwards, when we were heavy into COVID and I was in a state of PTSD shock.

I know that with all of that, that happened then, it was a blessing to not carry to term.

God had answered my prayers which was that I didn’t want to have children if I was going to hurt them.

In hindsight, I am also thankful not to have children with a narcissist and a father who emotionally abuses and lies to women.

As my friend says, and she is so right, this world is hard enough, even with a lot of advantages and privileges, a leg up in this world, that I did not have and many that I still couldn’t offer a child.

I used to have mixed feelings about having children. I was made to feel that I was selfish for wanting them, though I cared for my ex’s child like my own. He had me convinced that I would not be a fit mother with my mental health history, that I would not be a fit wife either.

Now though, I think, much like our relationship not working out, I think about how thankful I am for my desires not being granted. God delivered me from not bringing children into a dysfunctional situation. Another family that would not provide stability.

I feel I dodged a bullet.

I also believe this: that while I grieve for my children, in ways that I am only now able to do, fully and entirely, I also have lived many years as a childless adult women. I like the abilities to travel, read, spent my money and time more freely than I would be if I had carried my babies to term.

Instead, I choose to think this: I think of my mother. I think of my unborn children with my mother. In the afterlife, heaven, the spirit world. The next realm, whatever.

My mother loved babies so much. She cooed at them and my cousin told me that the day she died, she had lunch with them and she could make his son squeal with laughter in a way that he never could. Deep belly laughs.

She was a wonderful mother and, looking back, she did so much with so few resources. She deserved to be able to enjoy children without the stress she was constantly under, being married to an alcoholic father and in an unstable marriage, a working poor household.

I like to think of them together. I like to think that they will never know pain or hurt, trauma or grief. Only joy. Comfort. Warmth and love. Security.

I like to think of my father—who assumed a more grandfatherly role in his few years of sobriety with the neighbor’s children. The way he adored them.

I think he would have adored my children and I like to think of him as resolved, no longer tortured, in the pain that led him to complete suicide, to take his own life.

Moments like these, I think about my grandmother. I realize I am like her in many ways, my Grandma Donelson. She lost her son, then her husband, then her parents. All within the 70’s. Then her husband and parents were all within a year, or a bit more. She was suddenly without family. (Except my father).

I think about how many years she lived without her loved ones.

I think about her and I think about my great aunt who just passed away at the ripe old age of 96 this past January 30th. She was another grandmotherly figure to me. I think about how long she lived without the love of her life who passed away nearly 27 years earlier.

Maybe “A Man Name Motto” is an emotional movie.

Maybe I’m just processing still, the grief.

I think both are true statements.