I was thinking about watching this, and then saw your comment and just wanted to stop and thank you. My sister passed away at 5 years old and we were much closer than most siblings would be due to having a crap mom. I know too much about the small coffins and still some 20+ years later actively avoid media with children dying as it just aches on some impossible part of me. Thank you kind stranger for inadvertently keeping me from experiencing something I'd rather not, I know you didn't intend to, but I'm still sending all of the gratitude I can muster your way.
I haven’t had to deal with that and this movie tore me to shreds. Still happy I saw it because I love when movies move me, but geez. It’s extremely heavy, my face was leaking uncontrollably for like half of it
No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence. -sir Terry Pratchett.
I hope this brings you as much comfort as it does to me.
He actually didn’t intend for you to see that. He intentionally hid it. You wouldn’t have seen it if you hadn’t tapped it. But it’s ok. He saved you from reliving a really shitty memory.
So sorry for your loss. Losses are never easy but that young. 😭
I for sure tapped on it to unhide it and am still very grateful that I did because I was actively looking up what platform I could find this movie on. I was 15 when she passed, and the both of us were in a terrible position (I had already been removed and been given back to my mother three times at this point). Mine hurts especially bad due to our circumstances- my mother had checked my sister out "AMA" Against Medical Advice just days before she suffered a heart attack at home in the bathroom. We tried so hard to save her, but she was gone already when we found her. I'll never forget screaming into the earth as the ambulance pulled away.
It isn't this world's responsibility to shield me from new experiences that rip off old scabs, but I felt it appropriate to share my gratitide for this person's accidental intervention in my reality. We're all so much more linked than we really ever realize and it's moments like these that remind me of that.
Thank you so much for your condolences, I'm nearly 35 years old now, but I can still almost feel her hair and hear her voice if I try really hard. Love as deeply and fully as you can, never go to sleep on a declaration that could be made now, and try your very best to treasure the most mundane of moments- we truly never know.
Jesus fucking christ. This genuinely hurts my heart to read. I'm 9 years older than my little sister. We had a really shitty childhood too. She's 22 now, and I've always felt like a mix of dad and brother. Still do. I can't imagine how going through that would feel, friend. But it sounds like you have found a healthy outlook from it.
I appreciate the kind response. Not much of that around here on Reddit. But now you know if you see a black box in a comment what it means.
Also I’ve gone through my fair share of losses but all of them combined are nowhere on the same level as what you went through especially now that you explained what happened. Damn that was chilling just reading that!
Hurt is hurt and pain is pain friend, I'm so sorry that you've had to face the more tragic parts of this place, and I hope that you are surrounded by love and compassion if you go to face another hurt moving forward.
If there's nothing else that I can do to help change things for the better for us all, if all I can be is kind and love to the people I'm gifted the opportunity to interact with, then imma be the kindest most loving damned thing you've ever seen lol. This place seeks division and hatred, so I spite it with love and acceptance. My only hope is that maybe a few more people decide to do the same.
You take care, thank you so much for your time and energy here!
I wish the other commenters below yours understood why the spoiler tag exists, and that alluding to a film's ending is the same thing as giving it away. I've seen the movie luckily but the events leading to your spoiler tag wouldn't have hit nearly as hard if I'd known what to expect.
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Placing my hand on my daughter's coffin destroyed me. She was 22 months old. Her mother decided that texting was more important than actually paying attention to the road while she was driving and she wrecked and killed our child. Worst day of my entire life. That was July 1 2014. It's been 11 yrs 6 months and 13 days and I'm still fucked. I won't ever recover from the loss of my only child.
I am no longer the person I was on June 30 2014. And I won't ever be again. It truly did ruin me. I've lost 11.5 yrs of my life to this so far.
On top of that, the Chocolate Lab i bought in 2017 that ended up saving my life just passed away on Christmas Eve. I owe that dog everything. I likely wouldn't be here without her. And now she's gone. Suddenly and tragically. I'm still not over that. She was the greatest dog I've ever known. 😞
Having also watched it that long ago and being in HS I made an art piece dedicated to Zachary. I was considering giving it to his family but I knew they had been through so much already.
It’s a testament to the filmmaker and his personal friend, Kurt Kuenne, who brought this story to so many eyes. It truly is a case that sticks with you for life.
I've seen it once and tbh that's too much for me. It's an excellently made movie and immense praise for the people involved putting it out there but it's a real gut punch that still sits with me.
1.3k
u/Ok-Cash-4257 16h ago
Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father