People We Love Go First. Emotions Go Later.
Reflective notes on waiting, grief, and hope after watching the movie adaptation of Denis Johnson's novella, Train Dreams.
When Robert sleeps on the ashes of his burnt home waiting for his wife and daughter, we see ourselves in his place - longing for someone or something to return that we most innately want to come back.
We unknowingly hope his wife shows up and from that moment on we become one with Robert until the end of the movie.
That sequence of Robert staying in denial and hoping they come back is felt by us at some point in our lives or we fear feeling it someday.
Despite all the struggles, Robert does one thing in silence - Hope.
He waits fighting internally for the return of his wife, his daughter and his whole life’s purpose. He stays in that bubble, for so long that later we see people calling him crazy; spoken so subtly in a conversation with Claire.
Later, one day when he finds a girl with bruises, running high temperature, hurting outside his home; he believes her to be his lost daughter who came back.
He carries the girl in his arms inside his home. The one that was rebuilt in anticipation, finally has a meaning of home.
He believes that the girl is his daughter and he gently cares for her but he is the one healing.
He later sits on the chair next to the girl and his face shines up finding his purpose again. He finally sleeps with a smile. He finds warmth in caring for her for those few hours.
When he wakes up the next morning, only to find the bed empty, and can’t seem to find her anywhere, he quietly accepts.
He realizes how many years has gone by, he then travels, flies on a plane, watches a man in the outer space on a television, and lastly looks himself in the mirror.
We see him becoming one with the nature on the very home he built at the end. He went away but the quiet fight of waiting for their return stayed.
We all are suffering silently. Lost in our own weight and we struggle to cope with it.
If only we can leave our baggage and start fresh, as a page turned.
But life don’t offer new pages. Atleast not without the heftiness of the ink on the previous paper.