Antwone Fisher

I caught this movie on cable tonight. I vaguely remember reading the book before the movie came out in theaters. I’ve seen it a few times before, but it’s been long enough that this time I saw it with a fresh perspective. I’d forgotten how much I like it. It is based on a true story. It takes place in one of my favorite cities (San Diego) and centers around a young man in the Navy. I was in the Navy once. Sometimes I miss it…I miss the camaraderie, the security and the sense that I was doing something useful. Plus it has Denzel Washington in it and I would watch Denzel read the Cleveland Yellow Pages.

Anyway, this young man had a really hard life before joining the Navy. He was abandoned by his mother, abused by his foster parents and eventually thrown out on the streets to fend for himself. That’s when he joined the Navy. But his past, and his inability to come to terms with it, causes anger issues, which cause him to be faced with the possibility of being thrown out of the Navy. He works through those problems with the help of a psychiatrist (Denzel), who urges him to go find his family. He does…and faces the people who abused him and finds the mother who abandoned him. He also finds a large extended family who welcomes him with open arms and he finally feels like he belongs.

This post isn’t a movie review…I’m getting to my point.

He goes back to the psychiatrist to tell him that he found his mother. He says “I forgive her, but if I never see her again…”

When all hell broke loose with my father’s health, I had been in the middle of dealing with my (lack of) relationship with my mother. We have a bad past with things that happened that I thought I could never forgive her for. People would tell me “You can’t be angry with her, she did the best she could do at the time.” Bull. I felt she purposely did what she did to be hurtful and vindictive. I couldn’t let go.

Then I faced the possibility of losing one of the most important people in my life. The person who took me out of that bad environment and gave me the tools to live a better life. The person I’d looked up to for as long as I could remember. Suddenly, my biological mother was no longer important.

She is missing out. She doesn’t know the person I’ve become and she never will. She’s chosen to have our relationship end up this way. I am a good person and her life is emptier for not knowing me.

I forgive her, but if I never see her again…