Imaginary Heroes

I just watched this movie on HBO a couple days back, and felt a bit cathartic. Here's a snippet of the review written by George Schmidt on imdb.com:


Why does a family fall completely apart when a serious crisis occurs?

Well in the case of the Travis family it is the shocking, out-of-nowhere sudden horrific suicide by their eldest son Matt (Pardue), a star athlete with nothing but a bright, shiny future ahead who inexplicably offs himself sending his relatives into a whirlwind of emotions (and lack of to boot). Sharp tongued yet surprisingly loving mother Sandy (Weaver, the best thing about the film) resorts to smoking marijuana when she's not dodging the next door neighbor (O'Connell) ; ineffectual father Ben (Daniels in the trickiest performance – making an asshole likable) whose undying love for his dead son sends him into the deepest depths of depression and lashes out at his remaining brood; college age sister Penny (Williams) who attempts to anchor her grief in brief return visits only to party with blinders on and namely middle son Tim (Hirsch) who just is trying to move on with the whole affair and not dwelling on it as best he can yet still getting himself into a series of situations leading to a fall he may not be able to recover from.

That saves me a lot of energy trying to rehash the plot here for y'all.

I left my viewing of it wondering if I could, or should, purchase it for my aunt Deb. On one hand, I think it could speak to her very powerfully. On the other, I think it might piss her off a bit. While I'm not extremely close with most of my family, avoiding the creations of emotional shitstorms is still a pretty good idea.

A bit over ten years ago, my cousin Matt took his own life (a chilling parallel to the movie for me, and ultimately what makes me think of this right now at all). This is literally the first I've ever written or talked about this. When it happened, I was very busy being the strong one every relative around me could lean on. The one person I tried to turn to for support of my own, my ex Shelley Barker refused to give any support because his death was suicidal. This was the end of our relationship, and the beginning of her years of stalking me. I'm digressing.

The first years after his passing, my aunt and uncle began spending a lot more attention on me and my situation in life than they ever had previously. Whether true or not, it felt like they were using me as a sort of surrogate to their parental feelings and expressions. My response was to distance myself from them emotionally, and then once I moved to Chico, physically. As I write this, I realize this is when I began closing myself off from most everyone else in my family as well (save for my grandmother, with whom I've always been closest).

Somehow, I never dalt with the death of Matt. Watching this film was somehow both a wake-up to this fact, and an instrument of letting go. I don't know if I'll begin reconnecting with family more now or not. At this point, I'm not even sure what my point is in writing this post at all.

In my life, I've lost two family members (whom I knew personally), one best friend and one love. Each has affected me in such different ways. I'm now able to feel a warmth when I think of Matt, when I used to just feel empty.