Loss, Love, and Motherhood

In 2011 A-1 Pictures released Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, written by Mari Okada, and my life was changed.

I've always used the visual medium as a way to express myself and process my feelings in one form or another, be it something I made myself, like photography or by viewing the work of others. AnoHana is one such work.

I was only eight-teen at the time, just barely a young adult, and incredibly lonely when it first aired. For the uninitiated AnoHana tells the story of five friends trying to grant the last wish of their late friend; but as time has gone on I've come to see it as the opening act in the relationship between a mother and a child, and a childhood lost. Mari Okada's adolescence was riddled with social anxiety, a dysfunctional family life, and a formative encounter when, one day her mother tired to kill her.

This led to a mother-daughter dynamic Okada has been exploring ever since, and one that has helped me re-evaluate my own relationship with my mother as I entered into being a parent myself full of conflict and responsibilities I never quite understood until now. You see, a long time ago, I felt abandoned and resentful for things that happened that were out of my control, or even my mother's and I held onto that anger like a tempestuous child, but my mother had her own burdens to bare.

It was then in 2018 that Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms was released. The story which was unassuming at first glaze hit a deeply personal chord, an immortal girl taking in and raising an orphaned child as her own, and ultimately, saying goodbye. I watched it and thought of the kind of mother I would be, about how Maquia would do anything for her son Ariel, and wondered if I could be that strong myself, if I could make a promise to my own child to never cry again, just like Maquia promised Ariel.

I was too bitter to be willing to accept an idea like that, and felt like I was owed what I wasn't given while growing up, and Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms showed me the promise of what truly loving a parent could be.

You don't fully understand what your own parents went through until you become one yourself, you never realize the time and energy it takes, and the emotional and mantel toll it has, and even if you do, it doesn't always get rid of that aching nostalgic burn and that's when, after I was a parent, that Okada's newest film Maboroshi, finally made me realize it's okay to hate the parent you love.

If Maquia showed me the ideals of what a mother ought to be, than Maboroshi showed me the reality. Because you can't always forgive the hurt you felt and the hand you were dealt as a child, things your parents did or didn't do for you.

It's important to remember it isn't your fault for the things that happen to you, and when I finally held my children in my arms I had come to realize, while I wondered what it was like to look through the world with those big eyes of theirs, that I fully realized with my heart overwhelmed, beating like crazy, that they made me feel like I was finally alive.

There are things about my own I'll never understand or even forgive, I can hate those things with as much energy as I can muster, and she could do the same, but I think, I can at least learn to forgive.