I've seen sunny days

At the weekend I watched the film Running on Empty. As I have said before, I really like that film, although I am not entirely sure that I can explain why.

I apologise in advance for giving away some of the plot to the film, but in a lot of ways it is the relationships and the interactions within the film that are what it’s about, as opposed to the plot.

Anyway, the basic premise of the film is that a couple had to go on the run after they seriously injured a janitor who was in a building that they planted a bomb in when they were protesting against the Vietnam War. For all the years that followed they had to keep moving from place to place every time someone got too close to who they really were. They had a couple of children and the eldest one, Danny, played by River Phoenix, is a really talented musician and wants to go to the Julliard School of Music, but knows that he can’t go because it will split up the family.

His mother, Annie, played by Christine Lahti, learns by accident that’s what he wants to do and you see her go through the pain of wanting her son to have the life that he should have and the realisation that he’s reaching an age where he needs to be able to do that, even if it means losing him.

There is one particular scene in the film that really struck me and, without meaning to sound really pathetic, actually made me cry. Annie asks someone to arrange a meeting with her father. She hasn’t seen or had any contact with him at all in the fourteen years since they’ve been on the run. So she turns up at this restaurant and there he is waiting, not knowing that it is her who is coming to meet him. He looks shocked when he sees her and in his anger tells her how painful it has been for her to have been gone from his life for those fourteen years, wondering where she was and if she had been responsible for the death of other people. Wondering whether she ever gave even the smallest thought to her parents. But then he can’t help but tell her that he knows what a talented and beautiful daughter she was and you know that his anger is because he loves her and has mourned her loss all those years.

Annie tries to explain why she had to do the things that she did and apologises for the pain that she has caused. She tells him that her son wants to go to Julliard, but the only way to do this is if he is able to live a normal life, which would mean him going to live with his grandparents. Her father points out the pitfalls of this plan – they would come under the constant scrutiny of the FBI and she would never be able to see her son again. She knows that this is a lot to ask but she needs to do this for the sake of her son. After his protestations, he says that he will take Danny and she knows that by doing this she will feel that loss that her parents have felt all those years, by herself giving up her son. They say a few closing words and she walks back out of his life again.

If I look at that scene, I think there are a few levels on which it gets to me. The interaction between a father and his daughter- he wants to be angry with her because it has hurt so much losing her. But when he at last has the opportunity to talk to her, his anger quickly subsides because he loves her and is willing help her even though there is great sacrifice involved, for all concerned, in agreeing to take her son. That a father would love his child so much, despite everything, and be willing to make that sacrifice is something that gets to me.

But it’s also that you can feel the sense of loss that both of them experience. Her father at having lost his daughter and his grandchildren, not able to know what is going on in their lives. But also Annie, feeling the loss from not being able to contact her parents, knowing how much pain she has caused them. She then is also going to suffer the pain of losing her son - and it’s also about that willingness to give someone up because you want what’s best for them.

I look at that and it reminds me of losing A. I don’t spend much of my life dwelling on it, although A is often there at the back of my mind. The loss is there because of the good stuff, something that I wouldn’t change for the world, and sometimes something taps into that underlying pain. That relationship coming to an end and ultimately A disappearing from my life was about both loss and a willingness to give someone up.

It was complicated, and I don’t need to explain it here, but whilst we were still in contact, I had to be willing to make a decision to let A go. I could see that it was the right thing to do and that by trying to hang on to that relationship it would in its own way destroy it. I had to push A at times to make decisions, decisions that were not mine to make, even though I knew that they would have an adverse effect on me. But I’m not one to give bad advice or to just say something for personal gain, particularly to someone who I love very much and want what’s best for. Sometimes what’s best for someone, those things that they need to do or go through, are things that you can’t go through with them. You have to look on from the sidelines and hope that someday they’ll come back to you.

We did actually maintain contact for a while but then when A couldn’t cope with it any more, contact was severed and for me it was like someone dying. There was one particular point, about three months later, when I was really angry about it and I wrote A a letter and explained how hard it all was. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but to be honest there wasn’t much to lose and at least by some feeble means I was sticking up for myself by saying how much it hurt and that those choices that had been made were not what I would have chosen to do. It’s not that I didn’t understand or couldn’t see why those choices had been made, but if it had been up to me, I would have done it differently. I would at least have made sure it was finished business - that those things that needed to be said were said, those things that needed to be done were done.

But over time wounds heal in their own way. You never forget, you never stop feeling the sense of loss, but life goes on. Life is normal. Life is still full of possibility and hope. You know that the loss comes from the good that was there, and although that brings sadness, it also brings gratitude and you love them because of all those things that made them matter to you in the past and them continue to matter to you now. It’s not that you want the past back because that’s exactly what it is – the past - but you want the chance to at least know that they’re ok. Sometimes you don’t get that chance, sometimes you never get the answers that you want, and you don’t get the finished business or the chance to start afresh. But still you live in hope.