Movie Madness

How’s this for surreal? Drive to a park, walk down a path to a former dog “beach,” listen to some moving speeches from family, relatives, and friends, watch someone dig a hole in the ground to receive cremains, empty three baggy’s-full of ashes into the hole, and mound the dirt back on top.

Find a nice pile of stones to put over the mounded spot, talk for a few minutes, walk back down the path to the car, drive back to the house, drive like the wind to pick up Harry’s pizza and salad, then race back to feast on it.

Drive to a neighborhood church, walk in and wander around its empty rooms, watch as so many people arrive they fill up the room. Hold up a teeny, tiny Flip video camera to capture the cast of hundreds who have crowded in to honor Janet with speeches and piano playing. Step up to the podium and read some words on a page that try to capture what it’s like to be a best friend among a sea of best friends. Meet and greet once all the talking and piano playing end. Go home and toss and turn – then have nightmares.

Luis Bunuel, where’s your film crew when I need it? Don’t you know that I feel like I’ve been cast in one of your movies?

Yep. My life has become a foreign film. What’s odd is how incredibly real it now seems. Sure, on a day-to-day basis, my old life was real, too, but in a different way - painful, annoying, upsetting, fun, agonizing, delightful, and scary, all at the same time. I took that old reality for granted, though. These days surreal is my new reality (sort of like how 60 is the new 50).

Since I started living on Planet Janet, I feel surreally disconnected from planet Earth. I used to think reality equaled down-to-earth activities like hanging out with my husband, reading, running errands, going to the library, knitting, cleaning the house, cooking yummy dinners, emailing, talking on the phone to the usual suspects, shopping, thinking clearly, watching Netflix videos, going to the movies, exercising regularly, or enjoying Connecticut’s amazingly beautiful fall weather.

These days reality makes me feel like I'm living inside a giant kaleidoscope. I turn in one direction and I’m hanging out with a 10 month old and 3 year-old. Turn again, and I’m interacting with a changing cast of adult mourners. Keep turning, and I’m helping to organize bills and receipts, obituary editing, or memorial-service planning. Turn once more, and I’m exploring the rocky terrains of sadness. The weird part is, living in this new amorphously psychedelic reality makes me feel useful – and alive. Yeah - achingly alive. But blurred around the edges.

It produces bad dreams, too, when I fall asleep. In one dream a very dangerous person was on the loose. He wanted to kill someone I was close to. I tried to protect this person (I can’t remember whether it was a male or female) from the killer, but it wasn’t possible, because the killer had amazing super powers and could track my every move. I tried to think of ways to hide, but I couldn’t figure out how to avoid being found.

After I woke up, I realized that it's impossible to avoid death, because it’s inevitable. And omnipresent. Yeah, it’s merely waiting in the wings to swoop down and snatch me up. Like it snatched up Janet.

Move over, Carl Jung.