The things you wish you could ask...

Like the hordes of other people swarming to see the movie, I went and saw The Dark Knight a couple of nights ago.

Unlike most people, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Yes, I thought it was good, the Joker's plan macabre (and rather brilliant), and Heath Ledger's acting of the character quite good. I liked the movie...but was it one of the best movies I've ever seen (as my brother-in-law thinks)? No, not really. Was it the performance of a lifetime for Heath Ledger? Couldn't say, as I've only seen a few of his movies.

No, instead I think a large part of the frenzy is due to his death. People are fascinated by death, and often either curious or else frightened of it (or both). We're so damned celebrity-crazed in the U.S. that of course people want to see his last performance, to voyeuristically get a glimpse into his supposed life (despite that it's art, people; it's fake) or to see if the role could have driven him to drugs and an accidental suicide. It's the same reason why people will line police tape around accidents. And I imagine it's part of the reason why it's grossed over $300 million already.

But I'm on the other side of the police tape from most people. I know, far too intimately, what a death and an accident look and feel like. What the tears and gut-curdling fear taste like, what a dead body looks like, what funeral flowers smell like and how the perfume can invade your home and memory for days or years. What it means to have to look at, reexamine things after someone has died.

And I've learned a lot in the last three years, so much that sometimes what "other" people do and think about death makes no sense to me anymore. It's a little like watching animals at a zoo. You have no idea what they think, don't understand the herd mentality, and are a little puzzled at the whole thing. You're fascinated, intrigued, or interested but you're looking at something totally different from you. The only catch now is that I used to be in that herd, so it's an especially odd paradox now. (Or my other thought is that maybe it's that I'm now on the inside of the exhibit, the one being looked at and puzzled over. It's hard to say....)

But I'm digressing...except that it does illustrate how a person's perspective and reaction to things changes as a result of surviving a death, how grief changes what you think.

So I had some of the thoughts about Heath Ledger and the popular opinion of the movie swirling in my head as I watched it, but as I drove home, my thoughts of course drifted elsewhere.

And I realized I was in a dang pissy mood. And it didn't take too long to figure out why.

One of the last movies that Charley saw before he died was Batman Begins (the precursor before The Dark Knight, for those people who didn't know). He went and saw it with my brother-in-law J a few weeks or a month before he died. I remember him coming home and talking a little about the movie...but I don't remember anything of what he actually said.

I eventually saw the movie myself, on DVD (I'm assuming) several months or a year or more after he died. It was one of those "loaded" things to have to see or do in grief--a compulsion to see or know or read things that Charley did in his last weeks and months alive, to try to touch for a fleeting moment what he said or thought about them...for me, one of the only ways to remanufacture "new" memories with him.

The Pixar movie Cars that came out in the summer of 2006, a year after he died, was another loaded thing to have to tackle in grief. On our one and only wedding anniversary, in December 2004, when Anna was a few months old, we went to see a movie. Because we had a small child and baby-sitters and work schedules to have to maneuver--plus that our anniversary fell on a work night--we split up the celebration of our anniversary into a couple of different pieces. One night we went and saw a Portland Trailblazers basketball game. I'd never been to a professional basketball game but Charley had a few times, and we thought it'd be different and fun. But the game closest to our actual anniversary was on a work night so there wouldn't be time to make a "full date" out of the whole thing. So the weekend before our actual anniversary date, we got my parents to baby-sit so Charley and I could go to dinner and a movie. I have no idea where we ate, or if it was a locale of much portent, but I do clearly remember that we went to see The Incredibles at the movie theater. The trailer for Cars was one of the previews for it, and I remember that Charley was totally gleefully excited about the preview, couldn't wait to see the movie when it came out...and this wasn't a man who displayed extreme excitement, like a little kid, for much of anything. I thought his reaction was rather cute and endearing, even at the time, but I also remember thinking to myself and laughing, Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?? But it was sweet, cute. A reminder that you could think you knew everything about a person, but still be surprised and learn new things, new facets, about their personality.

Inevitably, going to see Cars became a terribly loaded thing after he died. I felt I had to go see it in the theater, to see it for Charley and for us and for all the five million other memories we'd never be able to make together. He couldn't go see the movie himself, but I could. So I went with my sister and her kids, while Anna was at her grandparents' house (she was too young to sit through a whole movie at that point). And it was a flaming disaster. My sister's daughter was obnoxious, and my sister and I alternated the whole second half of the movie between taking her to the hallway outside the theater and spelling the other person. As I result I never got to see all the movie that day...but it was actually okay with me. To this day, I've still never seen all of it. I've caught bits and pieces of it many times, possibly enough to add up to seeing the full movie, but I've still never sat down and watched it start to finish. Part of me never wants to.

And again, I'm digressing...grrr....But my point should be fairly clear: Some things--particularly, at times, some movies--are loaded because of Charley's death. I didn't think ahead of time that seeing The Dark Knight would be one of them, but it turns out it was.

As I drove home Monday night after seeing it, I quickly realized that part of why I was so pissy about the movie was because it made me think about Charley again. I'm used to revisiting our old memories all the time, to reminiscing and retelling stories about our life...but it's an odd juxtaposition where I'm having to equate something I'm doing in the present with something Charley did in the past. I expect most books dealing with Charley to be closed now, at three years after his death; it's weird to open new books, or find myself writing in the pages of a new one, and stumble upon a new moment with Charley.

Part of what got me grumpy about the movie was because I didn't get all of it. I mean, I understood what was happening, but I was tired when I saw it, wasn't paying sharp attention all the time throughout the two-and-a-half-hour running time. Plus after three years of mind-altering and amnesia-inducing grief, coupled with the brain atrophy that has come from being a full-time stay-at-home-mom during those three years, my brain just doesn't snap to order as fantastically as it used to. So I wanted someone to fill me in on what I missed, explain the small gaps that I didn't catch.

Plus I didn't remember much of what happened in Batman Begins, because it was, again, one of those loaded grief memories. (Easier to forget everything about it, than to open a can of such painful worms of Charley memories.) And also because Charley loved the original (to us, as kids) Batman movie, with Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. I don't remember now what he ever said about it, but I remember him talking about it in high school, us getting in joking "fights" how the then-newer Batman movies (Batman Returns, Batman Forever) could never touch "the original" movie. And I don't remember a damn thing about any of those movies now, other than that I saw them and that some of them were rather crappy movies, but Charley would have remembered everything about them (about the good, memorable ones, at least).

Charley was one of the very few--probably the only--people I could discuss movies with. Our minds worked in such similar ways, and after years upon years of knowing each other and our similar intelligence levels and perspectives, I enjoyed discussing movies with him. Not having this intellectual sparring and analysis anymore has made seeing some movies rather lackluster in the past three years. No, I don't usually think about it much anymore--it's just become another feature of the "new normal" to my landscape these past three years--but every now and then, I'm reminded what I'm missing.

Monday night after the movie was one of those times. I just wanted to be able to ask him about the movie so damn bad. And then of course, the dialog I started in my head as I drove home, which was pseudo-directed to Charley, got me thinking along other lines, about other things I would love to be able to ask him:

So, dammit all, Charley, what on earth happened in Batman Begins? I remember you telling me about it, how it was like (and unlike) the other Batman movies, but I can't remember what you said now.

And what happened in that first Batman movie too? Can't remember that one either, what you said years and years ago. I mean, I know I read that The Dark Knight isn't a sequel, or a prequel, or whatever those stupid reviews said, but how do they all fit together? Or is it like when you dragged me to Pulp Fiction when we were 17, and none of it has a damn thing to do with each other?

And what was that movie that you saw two days before you died, when Anna and I were in GP at our 10-year high school reunion? I remember you telling me about it, telling me how awful the last of the "triptych" was--you and your attempts to see and like arthouse movies--but I can't remember what the damn movie was...and I have no way to find out....

Dammit, can you please tell me?

[Pausing for a few moments, then, because I don't "talk" to Charley all that often anymore. But since I was on the topic of things I wish I could know....]

So....Was there any moment at all where you knew what happened?

Did it hurt?

Are you just phenomenally pissed at yourself, for making such a stupid mistake? Did you know that the pole was there, but just forgot for a moment?

Where are you now? Are you anywhere? Do you get to see Anna, me, at all?

Do you miss us? Because I sure miss you, all the time, every minute of every day, even though I'm so used to it by now that I don't even notice it....

Where are you?

But then I realized that my thoughts were getting a little too deep, and getting me a little too pissy (or else a little too sad). And then my writer brain started clicking over--as I inevitably do now, when the lid of the grief jar gets nudged open a bit more than I typically like--and I started transposing the thoughts in my head over to a post on my blog, so people could try to understand what my life is like now, how the grief changes and presents itself farther out from the death. And then the moment, my oneness to Charley, was gone....

Really, I should stick to fluff movies. It's easier to laugh them off, ridicule them for how silly and stupid and unrelated to real life they are.

Then again, I cried my eyes out on the way home after seeing 27 Dresses.

Hell, maybe I should just stick to kids' movies and cartoons that I've seen five thousand times. Disney princesses are good. And Curious George. Anna loves Curious George. It's safe, right?

Oh, wait. Damn. Charley bought Anna her first, (then-) one-and-only Curious George book, the reason why she ever knew who or what Curious George was in the first place, the first time we stumbled upon the cartoon on PBS. Damn.

Hmm....Well...umm....Yeah. Guess I'll just stick to blogs. He never read any of those....