Sometimes, after watching an emotionally gripping television programme, I would sit still in the quiet after. The TV off, lights on, gazing softly into the black screen, processing the feelings in the afterglow of excellent entertainment. Usually at that point, my eyes would be moist. Wet from taking it all in, the ups and downs, the roller-coaster of emotions the viewer is brought along and ultimately, how a great story should end. Perhaps also how from you suddenly imbibe the same realization as the protagonist. Whether it was a subdued victory, a simple yet vital act of courage, a letting go of a tumultuous past. It's unreal I know. I maybe breathing very slowly and suddenly take a deep inhale of oxygen while I close my eyes. I would hold them shut while I contemplated the sounds around me. The rise and fall of passing traffic, cicadas in the trees nearby, frogs rejoicing in the wet weather, the sharp scratch of a neighbour moving furniture against tile. All irritants to the bubble of feelings about to implode. My eyes would voluntarily open and I would start to bask in the stillness of my surroundings. Looking about slowly. Observing without intention, not thinking anything, not trying to move except for fingers and palms caressing the fabric of whatever I happened to be laying on. A meditation of sorts, though still recovering from the emotional torrent from minutes earlier. And usually these feelings do just slowly ebb away into the recesses of my imagined hyperaware state.
One time though, I cried. As I walked away from my living room sofa towards my bedroom, I simply burst into tears, muttering 'Why did Jenny have to die?'. This happened after I watched Forrest Gump. It was a grave loss to Forrest and somehow it struck a fragile chord in me too. (I won't go further except to add that perhaps that outpouring of grief, I surmised later, may have been related to the death of my father some years earlier.)
Tonight I watched the last two episodes of Catch-22 on cable television. A six-parter based on Joseph Heller's wonderful book. I never remembered the written narrative being so bleak. The show nonetheless told the story of a tortured Yossarian and his attempts at discharge from military duty very well. It was the loss of his friends, the cruel twists of fate, and his realization that he should have all just left his misguided interventions to fate (in the last 10s of the last episode) that got to me.
Perhaps it was also the long day. My mother was told she likely has cancer, some minutes after her doctor reiterated his conclusions, the same ones he advised a week earlier. She's home now because the doctors need to meet and decide which organs to inspect at length and how to do so. Apart from this proverbial smack in the gut, she's about the same as before we went into the A&E. Plot twist eh.
Time for a deep breath. And a wipe across the eyes. Time for bed.
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