I’ve returned, brimming with carbs and tired enough to have napped twice with Muriel today. Our Thanksgiving went well and Crankenstein and I spent this evening yawning on the couch, blankets on our laps and a dog dozing between us as we watched The Grey on Freevee. It held Crankenstein’s attention, which is no small task, and afterward she asked “What made you choose this?”
“I wanted a snowy movie,” I replied. “Not Hallmark snowy, something more like The Shining or The Thing.”
The lights were dim enough in the living room that she might not have noticed the tracks of my tears (to quote the great Smokey Robinson); the ending made me cry, as it had on my maiden viewing so many years ago. What I didn’t want to discuss then, though it might’ve been obvious to her anyway, was that I hadn’t just selected this grim tale of survival and existential despair for its seasonal relevance: I chose it because it’s an elegiac metaphor for this strange and lonely chapter of my life.
If you’re unfamiliar with the film, it stars Liam Neeson as Ottway, a sharpshooter who kills wolves that would otherwise predate upon oilmen. Mourning a wife lost to cancer, a suicidally depressed Ottway escapes several brushes with death only to find himself stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with a dwindling group of roughnecks, surrounded by angry wolves that enjoy quite a home-field advantage.
It doesn’t take Jessica Fletcher or Hercule Poirot to figure out why that currently resonates with me, so there’s no need to say much more about it — there will be plenty more blather about YOPD and other challenges in the days and months ahead.