Finding Neverland

Today, August 6, 2005, is the day my mother was laid to rest. She passed away from an apparent heart attack four days ago, August 2, 2005, after nearly six years of gradually-failing health due to Alzheimers.

After today's morning funeral service and subsequent family gathering, I came home and slept for four hours, exhausted after four days filled with all the things one is required to do to fullfill society's requirements for saying goodbye to a loved one.

After I woke up, I felt the need to escape with a movie for awhile (my wife was busy dealing with business issues she'd been ignoring for most of a week). I looked through my current Netflix selections for something that would take me away from the events of the last week. One of the movies waiting for me was The Notebook, which is about a man with a wife who has Alzheimers. I wasn't ready for that, so I looked at the next selection, Finding Neverland. I figured a good Johnny Depp movie about the creator of Peter Pan would take me away for awhile.

If I had been more familiar with the story, I might not have watched it, but I'm glad I did. Although, it is, in fact, about J. M. Barrie and the process he went through to create Peter Pan, it centers around his relationship with a young widow, Sylvia, and her four boys, and how he helped them deal with her sickness and untimely death. So, it didn't turn out to be the escape that I had planned, but it was what I needed to see and hear.

In the end, Barrie tells Sylvia's youngest son, Peter (whom the character Peter Pan was named after), that his mother has gone to Neverland and that he can visit her there whenever he wants by just believing he can. I don't know if I can find my way to Neverland whenever I want, but I do know that my mother is no longer under the hold of this horrible disease that's been had her in it's thrall for these many years. She's free to live on in all of our memories as the vibrant and vivid person she was for most of her life.

When the movie was over, I felt the need to write down my feelings. I don't know if any of this will be useful to anyone but me, but I decided to publish my experiences during this trying time. My mother's loss is a tragedy that I am still coming to grips with, but so many magical things have happened in connection with it that I feel the need to tell this story.

My mother is in a better place. I really believe that. But I've also witnessed that her loss has brought my family closer together. During the last few days, in re-telling the stories of her life, my mother has become more real to me than she's been in a long time. Where before most of my thoughts of my mother were about her condition, now they can finally be about the person she is and was. Whereas before she was a person who was dying, now she is a person who lived and lived very vividly.

So, I'm writing these things down to hold on to them and cherish them a little longer. It's a paradox, I suppose, that the act of holding on is also part of the process of letting go. But I'm not going to worry about that right now.

I included a couple of links regarding Alzheimers in the links section. More entries will follow soon.