I used to focus on what I had, rather than on what I didn’t have. No, not true. At eight or nine, I cut out a page from a small book and put it under my pillow. It featured a portrait of a lady with a delicate face, who looked kind. I remember my mother waving the page at me, angrily asking if I would have preferred to have a mother like that. She told me it was very ugly to want that. I felt ashamed.
Anyway: I concentrated on the mother I had. I rarely thought about other people’s mothers, but I found my friends terribly demanding toward theirs. I reckoned they expressed very little gratitude to their delightful moms.
Then I saw Happy Death Day 2U, a fun horror comedy directed by Christopher Landon. Which goes to show that enlightenment can come from unexpected sources.
In this film, [spoiler alert] Tree Gelbman is faced with a choice: accept fate, or manipulate it so that her mom, who passed away several months before, doesn’t die after all. In the end, Tree decides not to change the course of events, but seizes the opportunity to experience one last moment with her.
As if in a daydream, the mother appears, smiling and peaceful. She gazes at her daughter tenderly. Through this clever, unassuming scene, I understood all at once everything I had missed, everything of which I had been robbed.
Entranced, Tree throws herself into her mom’s arms before she is torn away from her—because she has no right to her.
photo © https://unsplash.com/photos/vrkw8LbA300