Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky
It isn't specifically about fathers, but somehow it seems to be about the emotion that I feel about my father in a lot of ways. Though he's not physically dead, it seems the pain of the scars that won't heal has reduced him to a shadow of the being that I can feel he is on some level.
It has been SO hard for me over the years, dealing with the weight of that pain. As a young girl I knew it was there and tried to carry it for him; as a young woman I denied that it was there and tried to pretend he was the person I wanted him to be (and when he wasn't, looked for fathers in a husband and a boss); and now, at the midpoint of my expected life span, I feel more and more ready to allow him to be where he is and just be present to that pain without either taking it on or expecting it to transform.
Struggling with all this, a friend texted me suggesting a movie and I decided that was just the thing. I ended up seeing Tree of Life, a visually breathtaking, engrossing, difficult to follow movie that was very much about the failings of our fathers.
And although my inner jukebox had landed on this selection even before I had decided on this film, when I read the lyrics I felt like it was an uncanny match for this film, which is also about a brother dying:
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eye
And because it's a Terence Malick film, it actually visually explores whether people who die are clouds in our eyes or stars in the face of the sky... pretty cool stuff!
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