If I let my eyes glaze over just right, I get a nice film quality picture.
I hover out of my body- like a mad director, evaluating what we've got, I snip the film strips from my memory, franticaly re-piecing together the story.
I didn't get the shots I wanted.
I feel hollow and sick.
Playing and re-playing the scenes where it all went to the dregs.
Maybe if I were paying closer attention- I could have gotten it right.
I could've rearranged the shot list- so "major life accident" was at the end of the movie- not the beginning.  

Sorting through what we're left with,
I hear no mellow music scoring my mothers choked sobs.
No soft glow to hide the harsh lines of grief described on her face.
The bottles of liquor weren't props.
And when the sound of silence rendered her breathless-
no one was there to yell "CUT"!
I grit my teeth and hold back my seething anger at such a **** writer.

This is not a sci-fi film.
No alien plummets to earth eager to turn back the sands of time because there was a fluke in the configubobulator.

Not a romantic comedy,
where his smashed body miraculously recovers and my mother, him, and all the kids pursue their dreams as a family of comics on the road- The jackson 5 of stand up!

No inspiring action film where the government tests a bionic exoskeleton, connects it to his brains nervous system, and after wild success he dedicates his life to intergalactic vigilante work, as well as a remaining a reliable family man.

There's no sending it back for re-writes.

There is no 1 hero to lean on.
No villain to hate.
Only us.
I hope one day, it's enough.

I hope one day we have a film we can be proud of.