Holding On

An Appreciation of 'Aftersun'

My parents are both north of 65 now, with almost a decade between them. As the years roll by, I can sense the balance of our relationship tilt towards the cliched but true adage of them becoming the children and my sister and I, the parents. This is a frustrating phase with a power struggle much like adolescence, except with the baggage of their past relationship with us to deal with additionally. I’d argue this is harder and messier because parents can’t just switch off being parents. They have more than a combined century of wiring to de-commission. 

Aftersun’s last few moments pictures a grown up Sophie watching the videos from the last trip with her dad, trying to make sense of it all. By now the movie has told us that her dad is no more, that he likely took his own life and the relationship between Sophie and her dad was special while it lasted. She is visibly nursing a giant hole, possibly dealing with similar emotions at a similar age. The 30s present their unique set of existential conundrums, especially when it comes to success and being settled. And it is at this time, that in our own glorious self indulgence we perhaps forget what our parents might have felt and dealt with at the same time. Aftersun forced me to consider that, and what followed was a deep appreciation for my parents’ ability to hold on, despite the odds. 

I often wonder what makes one feel like life is whole? Does there exist some magic set of conditions which result in a specific balance of hormones that lends itself to a feeling that everything is ok, that everything is enough? I believe so, and indulge in a fair share of mental gymnastics to convince myself that there’s enough of most things in my life. Love, wealth, pleasure, travel, the works. Even if any of those things aren’t necessarily on the right end of a normal distribution. This is the good fight for me, to pull back from the ‘trying to be better everyday’ train and occasionally remind myself that even if the getting better didn’t go to plan, I’m all right, mostly. But I’m lucky, there’s no one constantly telling me otherwise.

My parents didn’t have it as easy. They had noisy relatives and difficult parents. Relatives that they didn’t really pick for themselves. In that noise there is consternation and reminders of everything that wasn’t achieved or ticked off. Reminders of all of life’s inadequacies. There are status markers that weren’t acquired staring back at them, the house that was never bought, the car that is way beyond second hand. Then there was a sense of their children becoming aware of these things. There was under the sheer weight of expectations and failed dreams, a relationship wilting then slowly showing signs of rot.

What Aftersun stunned me into remembering was that these set of circumstances didn’t dampen their will to give their children a good shot. No matter how despondent the situation, how excruciating the embarrassment of our family’s inadequacy, my parents never gave up on us or on themselves. Parenting, for this reason is something I consider as life’s essential experiences. What is it about my sister and I that kept them going? To stop and consider that is acknowledging that I am the product of a wondrous kind of love. An uplifting feeling which Aftersun manages to extract from a story laced with grief. And this is also why Aftersun is confusing to process. The emotions it evokes are complex because feeling both devastated and uplifted is unusual but at the same time a lot closer to the complexity real life is about. 

In her essay ‘The Bathroom’, Zadie Smith reflects on the significance of a bathroom in the house she grew up in. She’d never understood why it was such an important room for her parents. Years later the reason creeps up on her in Jamaica and she begins to appreciate what the bathroom meant to both her parents, of how it was a reflection of dreams they’d left behind for the sake of their children. Smith speaks of how the idea of leaving so much behind for the sake of children, which made no sense to her earlier, made sense to her now. Aftersun rephrases that to ‘for the sake of love’.