Mar Adentro

Until the lights were dimmed.
(Reflections on Mar Adentro)
By: Clayton Ray Randell
Published in the "Gathering of Voices" 2005

I entered the Pickford Theatre on Monday at 4pm, and sat in the small crimson room with only two other viewers. Both women were in their late forties, one large and blonde, the other small and dark haired. I turned to them as the doors were closed and said, “Well, it wont be hard to tell who is talking during the movie.” They laughed and we made small talk, until the lights were dimmed.

I entered the Pickford Theatre on Monday at 4pm, and sat in the small crimson room with my two views. Both are heartfelt, one is secular and personal, the other is Christian and dutiful. I turned to them as the doors were closed and said, “Well, it wont be hard to tell what my heart is saying after the movie.” I laughed to myself and changed the subject, until the lights were dimmed.

I entered the Pickford Theatre on Monday at 4pm, and sat in the small crimson room with two expectations. Both were selfish, one was scholarly and extra credit worthy, the other was emotional and painful. I turned to them as the doors closed and said, “Well, I hope I get a good grade and some closure.” I laughed uncomfortably to myself, and tried to focus on what I wanted to say in my paper, until the lights were dimmed.

I never entered the room that my grandfather was in, a small sterile room in a home up in Blaine, for two reasons. Both were difficult to express, one I couldn’t think about and the other I couldn’t forget. I turned to them as the doors closed and said, “Well, what did I miss and did I do something wrong.” I never laughed about what happened, and I tried not to focus on the subject, until the lights were dimmed.

My grandfather on my father’s side was a “gruff” individual. He never spoke to me when I was a child, and the earliest memory I have of him was walking into the bathroom on him when I was about six. When my cousins and I got to be in high school, we seemed to be old enough for him to start taking an interest in us. I of course was far to busy chasing skirts, drinking, and getting stoned to go visit, that “ornery old man”, so I never had any real relationship with him.

At my wedding, I was pretty busy. We had a small ceremony at my father’s house. All told we had about fifty guests. My grandfather was there and out of the blue decided to start talking to me. I was on my way to start the music, so that my fiancé and I could walk down the aisle, and start our new life together. Not exactly an opportune time to chat it up with that “ornery old man”, so I never had any chance to have a relationship with him before we moved to Hawai’i.

On our honeymoon, we were pretty liberated. We had sold almost everything we owned and flew to Hawai’i. What we still owned was under our arms or sitting on the sidewalk. We got a rental car and drove to a hotel that my grandfather told us about. Our room was so small I couldn’t get the door open without hitting the twin bed in the far corner. We had to crawl over our duffel bags to get into bed. There was a screen eighteen inches tall and as wide as the door, open to the hallway where some women was screaming on the payphone about how her babies daddy “won’t pay no child support”. The Neon sign attached to the front of the hotel was ten feet high and 18 inches from our window. Even with the blinds closed it was bright enough to read the directions on a bottle of aspirin. We tried to get some sleep. I woke up during the night with a two-inch cockroach walking across my chest. I swatted and heard it hit the wall and fall onto the floor. It flipped over and ran out under the hallway door. I thought, “I should have known better than to listen to that ‘ornery old man’, he is the cheapest man on the planet.” Not exactly how my wife and I wanted to spend our first night in paradise.

My dad called a few weeks later to tell me that my grandfather had been in an accident. He and my grandmother were on their way back from Mount Vernon and traffic was backed up. The fast lane cleared and my grandfather pulled into it, unaware that a State Trooper was screaming down that lane with his siren off and no flashing lights. His head hit the column between the front and rear drivers side windows. The swelling caused damage in parts of his brain and he went into a coma. When he awoke he was only my grandfather for a few moments a week, the rest of the time he spoke German or thought he was in a different time, and talking to different people.

We moved back to the states after two and a half months in Hawai’i. My grandfather lived for four more years and I never visited him. He was put in a home and visited by my father and my brother, but I couldn’t overcome my guilt. I couldn’t overcome my discomfort. I couldn’t overcome my fear of death. I couldn’t relate to that “ornery old man”. Until the lights dimmed.
Now that he is gone I can never know him, or what it was like to be as sharp as a tack one day and then unable to control my own thoughts the next. To be independent one day, and then convalescing the next. I got a sense however watching Javier Bardem. He is transformed from a solid Adonis in his twenties to a fifty year old quadriplegic, felled by an accident rather than Artemis.

I could not get my grandfather out of my head during the film. Would he have wanted to continue that way? Would I? You hope that a cure can be found, that someone would get better. Sadly, that is not the movie we get a ticket to when shuffling onto this mortal coil. Nor is it the one that awaits us at the end of our journey. The minute you’re born you begin the inevitable path to your own end.

That is definitely not the movie I got a ticket to on Monday at 4pm. The life unfulfilled, the life in torturous stillness. Unable to feel the world, trapped in a body that is dead with a mind that still lives. I have felt in the past that whether or not someone wanted to live or not was up to them. If you would help a quadriplegic get drunk and smoke because he can’t do it himself why not help him with his decision to go the distance with unhealthy behavior. Still, as a Christian I am faced with the knowledge that we all serve a purpose on this earth. That God has a plan for us even in our misery, because we do not exist for ourselves alone, but to serve others.

So did Ramon Sampedro selfishly give up the ghost because he was too weak to persevere? The New International Version Bible 2nd Corinthians verse 16 states, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Or was Ramon Sampedro fulfilling his destiny. He brought his poetry and his voice to people and sacrificed himself for the belief that someone with no control over their physical lives should be allowed to make the ultimate decisions about their lives.

I went to that movie hoping to have an answer given to me. I thought that Rosa might talk him into living or that Julia’s strength in her degenerative disease would inspire him. Would Javier’s youth guide Ramon in seeking to guide Javier? Would Ramon’s father have sage advice for him and all of us? Would his brother’s own sacrifices convince him, or me? Would the wheelchair bound priest, show him the light? Maybe, I would sympathize with Ramon and concede totally that his friends had a responsibility to help him with his request. None of these things happened.

I laughed when Ramon and the priest traded jabs, I laughed when Ramon told Julia that he wanted her to come scratch an itch on his leg. But, I also sat in that theatre for two hours barely able to keep from sobbing out loud for those two ladies in the theatre to witness.
Ramon Sampedro said, that when others must take care of you that you learn to smile while you cry. I cried during the courtroom scene as he was denied a voice and he wore that same smile.

Ultimately I was left staring at Julia’s blank face. Both of us saying who is Ramon? Julia gave no answer. Gené herself pleaded with Ramon to stay. He left anyway. My grandfather left anyway.

To me Mar Adentro was the epilogue to Ramon’s book of poetry. A new verse to be read, to evoke our emotions, and illustrate a sample of someone’s life. Not give us answers. That is what art is after all. Even those who think they express some message through their art are
still left at the mercy of what others perceive. So like Ramon. Few could understand really how he felt and what his life was like. Yet people tried to force their opinions and feelings onto Ramon. You can experience the art, however understanding cannot be given.

Like Ramon Sampedro we must decide whether to drink of the nectar of life or sip 200 mg. of Cyanide Phosphate. Whether or not we should help someone to choose the latter is something I think that the individual must decide, and the courts and others can only interfere with.
Manuela captures the heart of it. She loved Ramon, and respected his wishes. She wanted him to be happy, and in the end, starring out at the sea within, I believe he was.