Right, so there’s no particular anniversary to celebrate at the moment unless you want to count the anniversary of the day (May 25, 2023) that I was released from the hospital the second time, the time when we called 911 so I could be rushed to the ER for several blood transfusions and other resuscitating chemical solutions. It’s the anniversary of that, I suppose, which means around this time last year I was sitting on our couch 12 hours a day with the dogs, making the conscious choice to finally just start following the Dodgers and/or Angels, because both teams would play most days, so I’d have something to watch/look forward to (sort of?), because my outlook at that point was I’d be spending the entire summer on said couch, that is when I wasn’t receiving chemo, heading to various doctor appointments, and/or inevitably landing back in the hospital. Around that time, I talked to someone who’d had lymphoma like me, and he told me he had a stretch where he was in the hospital for ninety out of a hundred days during his treatment. I braced myself for something like that.
But it turned out that second ER visit, while unbeknownst to me at the time, would be the nadir of my treatment. When I got home, I was so weak I could barely stand, but over the subsequent days and weeks I was able to walk the dogs a block, then two blocks. At one point I cooked dinner for the first time in months (roast chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli), and I even made it to a music festival (albeit in a wheelchair). Eventually, I found I was able to write in the mornings, and not long after that I started this newsletter.
I suppose I accidentally marked this anniversary by sitting down and watching a movie I’ve been avoiding for the last year, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Released in 2015 and based on the novel of the same name (which, inexplicably, is on the list of banned books in certain red state school districts), it’s one of my favorite movies of the last decade or so, and also my No. 1 favorite movie about cancer (yes, I have a list). That’s the reason I’ve been avoiding it, because it’s sad as hell. I say “accidentally” above because I just happened to catch it right as it was starting when I flicked the TV on after getting the baby to sleep. As each scene went by, I told myself I’d turn it off, but I couldn’t. For one thing, the movie’s charms are hard to resist (see: Nick Offerman as Greg’s dad, reaching new heights of frumpiness), but mostly, I was sucked in by the experience of watching a film I love as someone whose means of relating to it had changed drastically since I last saw it.
As the title states pretty clearly, the movie is about an awkward kid named Greg (Thomas Mann) who has trouble expressing himself; his best friend Earl (RJ Cyler), whom he refers to as his coworker, because they make homemade movies together (essentially remixes of arthouse flicks like Blue Velvet and A Clockwork Orange); and their classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who is diagnosed with leukemia at the beginning of the movie. When Greg’s mom insists he visit Rachel out of neighborly obligation, his odd jokes and goofball affectations surprise them both when they turn out to provide actual comfort, and he becomes her unlikely wingman through her cancer treatment.
Like Greg, the movie is self-conscious and awkward, full of stylized camera moves, winking title cards, and Greg’s sullen voiceover, through which he conveys up front that this is not a romantic story, that he and Rachel do not fall in love, although Greg also tells us during the same voiceover that Rachel survives her ordeal, and one of these things turns out not to be true. But they do become fast friends, with Greg opening up to Rachel (thanks to Earl’s encouragement) in ways he never thought possible, particularly by sharing his and Earl’s heretofore secret homemade movies: “My Dinner with Andre the Giant,” “Senior Citizen Kane,” “Eyes Wide Butt,” “Hairy, Old and Mod,” and my personal favorite, “Grumpy Cul-de-Sacs” (aka Mean Streets), among dozens more.
Through it all, Rachel gets sicker. First the chemo takes her hair, then it takes everything else chemo takes—her face becomes jaundiced, her eyes sink back, she’s in and out of the hospital. By now she and Greg are close friends, but by now it’s becoming clear that her treatment isn’t working, that it’s just making her sicker, and that she may be out of options. Greg can’t accept that someone he’s become so close to may be slipping away, and the second act ends with Rachel deciding to stop her treatment and the two of them getting in a fight. But in the end Greg rallies, skipping prom and a date with his dream girl and instead visiting Rachel in the hospital and showing her the film he made just for her.
This final sequence, set to Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship,” accomplishes the trick of being both devastating and uplifting. In the hospital room with Greg by her side, Rachel watches as her friend’s film is projected against the wall. We only see it in bits and pieces—shots of Earl, shots of Rachel’s mom, some lo-fi animation—mainly focusing on the colors flashing across Rachel’s face and her look of bemused wonderment. As all this is happening, doctors rush in, and we learn through voiceover that shortly after this moment Rachel slipped into a coma and passed away, but for the time being we hold on her face, lit up by the kaleidoscope of color from Greg’s film, as Eno’s song builds to its epic crescendo.
Man. Gets me every time, and especially this time. I knew it was coming but I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t turn away, couldn’t stop the tears. But here’s what’s interesting: In the past when I watched it, I related to Greg’s awkwardness, how he hid behind dumb jokes. And I of course relate to Rachel’s illness, that feeling of helplessness as well as the steely resolve you find yourself cultivating, especially once you discover that one of your jobs amidst everything else is cheering up the people around you. But this was the first time I’d watched this movie as a parent, the first time I viewed the loss it depicts through that lens. And that’s what hit me the hardest, this time, not the fear and pain associated with my own illness, but the fear and pain associated with the loss of someone so close. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t imagine myself in that hospital bed, I imagined—and was able to process, in that cathartic way movies in particular lend themselves to—the fear I have of losing someone I love.
It was devastating and it was uplifting. Perhaps not as much as “Eyes Wide Butt,” but that’s a pretty high bar.
This is the Healings Newsletter. We thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, why not share it with a friend, or better yet buy them a gift subscription.
Healings is written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs. Ayana H. Muwwakkil provides art direction.
Healings is about illness, recovery, spirituality, and related topics, and began in the summer of 2023 as a chronicle of Garrett’s battle with cancer. We make no guarantees that it will hold together, thematically speaking, now or ever.
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