Dead Parents are More than a Movie Trope

I've seen a million movies where a character loses their mom as their tragic backstory, only to go on a harrowing journey of self-discovery; but none of them can ever compare to the morbid reality of standing on the grass where my decaying mom lays 6 feet below me.

I love movies. As a kid, I rushed home every day just to pop one of the Barbie Princess or Disney DVDs into our player. I mean most kids love Disney, don’t they? I sure did, as much as I loved dancing on the couch while the Marine Land commercial played, but the first Disney movie I never really cared for was Bambi. That famous scene where Bambi calls out to his dead mother never broke my heart as you’d expect, and now I can finally understand why. Unlike Bambi, I don’t get to just brush over the fact that the most important person in my life died several years ago and advance on to find my new independence in a magical fairytale world. But I will tell you what my quest of post-trauma soul searching consisted of: bottled up incomprehensible feelings that a seven-year-old girl repressed, until that bottle burst and she came to the realization that life is an ugly fucking mess.

I’ll never forget the blank look in my mom’s eyes as her shell of a body held up my childish “artwork” and uttered the last words I ever heard her speak, “that’s beautiful honey.” Or something along those lines, I don’t even remember. My mom died when I was seven. Though she was diagnosed with pneumonia, that wasn’t what killed her. You’d think that the first illness doctors would check for would be one of the world’s leading killers, but turns out that medical mistakes are made. We didn’t realize it was actually stage 4 lung cancer until her existence was fading like the life in her eyes. But everyone’s heard hundreds of sob stories like mine in their life, and the reality is, most of the people reading this will go home today to pick up a call from their mom or find her in the kitchen cooking dinner. And that’s the first thing you learn as a grieving teen: no one really gives a shit about your situation if they’re not actually in your shoes. But when sob stories are portrayed in cinema, the tables turn.

For most of us, wasting time immersing ourselves into cinematic worlds of unique stories that will never come to fruition is much more interesting than living our own lives. TV Tropes in films that allow us to imagine a unique story aren’t necessarily a negative thing. As we grow older, the films we watch allow us to shape our perceptions of what is real and what isn’t. In children’s films, however, the themes are bent on unrealistic ideals that evoke an always-positive perspective on life. But in a grieving little girl’s world, reality becomes a lot harsher much faster. There is no more comfort in reassurances that if you just believe, everything will turn out okay. That sense of comfort died with the last time I asked, “you’re not going to die are you,” to my mom as she tucked me in every night, met with the typical, “of course not,” response. I was forced to grow up the moment all the romanticized tales, such as an orphan taking revenge on his parents' killers after becoming a heroic vigilante or counting on the magic of friendship to save your loved ones from any hardship, reverted to exactly what they really are: fantasies.

My dad never let me see my mom when she died. I wasn’t allowed to be there when they very well knew it was coming. My dad’s excuse was that he didn’t want me to see her that way, but all he did was unknowingly steal those last moments from me that I deserved to spend with her. The funeral was closed-casket to protect me from the reality of death. And that was exactly what happened as I played with colorful beads and laughed with my sister the entire funeral procession, and as I wondered why Santa never brought my mom back after I wished for her year after year. I never really lost my mom until I understood that she was dead. Because I was so removed from the situation in the hopes of painting her as anything other than a pale dying woman, I don’t even remember her at all.

No matter how I slice it, charming heroes in films with a generic dead parent backstory will continue to go on magical quests, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Movies with this trope will still be written with no exploration of emotion, or a unique take on the narrative. These are all simple things I cannot change, just like the fact that I’ll never get to see my mom again. Finding out that life isn’t fortunate to the kind-hearted is something that as we grow up, we just have to understand, and something that many kids find out too late. This story isn’t going to have some motivating ending where I write some inspiring quote about how bad things will always get easier, because it’s been almost 9 years and I still wake up in tears as my dream crumbles away and I realize the woman I was just jumping rope with doesn’t exist anymore. I have my tragic backstory and I don’t need a harrowing journey of self-discovery, because finding myself has never been the problem. The only life-changing advice I've learned from years of grieving the missing puzzle piece in my life is that sometimes life deals you a shitty hand, and there’s nothing you can do about it except find some way to accept it.