Frequency
The movie Frequency was a life changing movie for me. It came out in 2000. I would have been 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. I would have already experienced the worst day of my life 6 years earlier. The day I lost my dad. And this movie changed my perspective on that day.
In the movie, Dennis Quaid plays a firefighter who dies in a fire. We meet his son (Jim Caviezel) as a grown adult who is having a hard time in life. He blames his current situation on the worst day of his life. The day his dad died in that fire. He finds a radio that connects him to his dad 30 years in the past. With this radio, he is able to warn his dad of the fire and he is able to save his dad from dying. Both men are ecstatic but what follows is a set of consequences that father and son work to undo.
At 15 with hormones raging through me, heartbreak always at the surface, a difficult home life that was unstable at times, I watched this movie on bated breath because Jim Caviezal’s character gets to do what I wish I could have done. He gets to save his dad. His life would be better–the demons that chased him were all because of his dad dying right? That’s why he drank too much, was angry at the world, and had a failing relationship. But no, that’s not why. Saving his dad didn’t save his own life. It brought even more hardship.
I often fantasized, and still do as I am in my 30th year without my dad, that if he was still alive, my life would be better. Over the past 30 years, I have inserted so many ‘betters’ depending on what I am going through at the time. When I was 15 and watching the movie for the first time, I imagined that I would have an easier family life if he was still alive. I would have a different identity than the one I labeled myself with. I was convinced that if my dad had been healed of his illness that I would not have this label and that the label I would have assigned myself would have been something positive. I guess in my fantasy I would have been the most well adjusted and confident 15 year old to exist if my dad had lived.
The movie changed my perspective. I started to become aware of all of the ways my life is better because he passed. Typing that is no easier than thinking a thought like that. Lucky that he passed? But it was the worst day of my life. And it was. It still is.
But my perspective changed. I started to see the puzzle a different way and I have watched that unfold in my life time and time again. The puzzle started to piece together when I realized that without his death I would not have ever met my step dad or his family. I am beyond thankful to have a loving step father. So many people will never get this. And in this way, I was chosen even more than a birth parent chooses their child. He took me on as a package deal with my mom and chose to treat me like his own. He chose me when he did not have to. He still does. And most people will never know this kind of ‘chosen’ and it is a sacred one. One I do not take lightly.
The puzzle started to form there: if he had not passed, I would not know what it is to be chosen by someone who did not have to.
The next puzzle piece was when I realized that my dad’s life insurance paid for my schooling. I was able to see that the friends I had and the schooling I had would not have been possible without his passing. His passing paved a road for me that would have been impassable. And if I love anything, I do love my friends. It became a little harder for me to say that I would give it all away to see him again. Doubt began to creep in the way it did in the movie: what if him living wasn’t the fantasy that I imagined? What if it didn’t solve all of my problems but rather just created a new set?
As I moved through adulthood, more puzzle pieces fell together. My friend from the school I never would have gotten to go to, invited me to her church. That church changed my faith. That church had a boy who played guitar and he changed my love life. That church built a school and that school hired me and gave me the best gift I have ever had in my life.
And still, I promise you I would give it all up for the chance to see my dad again and see what kind of life I would have if he were in it. The childlike fantasy will always tell me that my life would be bigger somehow if he were still here. More full of love and laughter. My life ended in a lot of ways when I was 9 and so the fantasy I carry will always be that of a 9 year old and you know what, that is okay. Everything having to do with my sweet dad told me that life with him in it was good so why would I think that it would not have been that same way if he stayed alive? I honor him a little bit in that way by assuming that my very good life with him would have continued to be good.
But this movie changed my perspective on the loss. It made the loss feel like a path with a purpose. What Satan means for evil, God means for good. But only if we chose to see the good. Some storms change us forever but we decide what it changes us into. So while I will always always wish that the worst day of my life never happened and that I still had my dad, I look around and feel the puzzle being completed. Maybe it wasn’t just the worst day of my life but the most transformative day of my life and I want to be transformed into a person who doesn’t carry around the heavy burden of loss and ‘what if’ and blame. I honor my dad with the fantasy, it's a way I still show him love. And it is also a crutch that prevents me from getting up and seeing a beautiful puzzle being made if I let it. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. We all have fantasies of who we would be “if” but this can also prevent our growth and I wanna grow. I wanna grow into a woman who can clearly see what was done FOR me rather than what was done TO me.
