Fear of Loss

So I watched a documentary called Exit Through the Gift Shop over the weekend. Great movie. (I love documentaries, especially when they involve creative people as subjects.) It's about a guy who spent years filming street artists, and actually before the street artists, spent years filming everything (family especially), went everywhere with his camera. 

One of the questions raised in this movie was, what was this guy's obsession with filming? It's revealed halfway through that his mother died when he was 11, and he hadn't even been aware she was sick, so her death came as a total surprise/shock. And now he's got this compulsion to document everything--because he knows from experience that at any moment without any warning life as he knows it could end.

I keep thinking about this guy and what he lived through and how he responded to it. Poor thing--I can't even imagine losing your mother at age 11. But I do know about suddenly losing someone incredibly important to you, whose day-to-day life is woven into the fabric of yours. And since that loss (my brother, nearly 6 years ago now), I can't do a thing without having the thought that this might be the last time everything is OK. Tragedy could strike at any minute. Must make an indelible record of this time as it could end so suddenly, so easily. I don't film, but I write things down, and save voice mails, and take pictures. And there's never a time I talk to or see someone I love that I don't think maybe this is the last time ever, and what can I do to fix this moment in my mind just in case that's true?

Probably not too healthy an approach to life. But the guy in this movie, he made me feel like I'm not quite so crazy--and not quite so alone.