Annie's Hell

Imagine your darkest hour, the point of dejection, the place in which immense fears fester and loom, mocking your sanity. Who or what will you call upon? The movie What Dreams May Come satisfies this uncertainty while capturing your attention with an assortment of exquisite paintings and distinctive characters that have very humanistic qualities to which we can all undoubtedly relate. There is also the hope of an afterlife that we conjure from our own memories or a hell endured encompassing our every fear, disappointment and wrong doing upon ourselves or others. This is where we find Annie, the wife of a gracious, hardworking and devoted man named Chris Nielsen. Chris has died, just as her two children did four years prior, in a car accident, leaving her spiraling into depression and alone to face a world with which she no longer wishes to be involved. She has chosen the path of least resistance by taking her own life. She must now dwell evermore in denial of her choice, engulfed in confusion, desperation, loneliness and martyrdom.

That is her state of being when we first lay our eyes upon her. The room, once an array of vibrant colors, is cast with shadows and defiled by dirty creams, antique brown, forbidding gray and punches of death black. Her home, now dilapidated and ripped of its dignity, ominously creaks, moans and threatens her every move as if begging for release from its loathsome prison. Chris stands there, his shoulders drooping and pain streaked across his face, undeniably out of place in tattered everyday business attire and a tired old trench coat. He stares at his true love, drowning in despair, draped in a filthy exhausted coal gray dress, covered only by a dreary brown rag that hints to have once been a shawl. Her hair streaked with silver, frizzes around her lifeless hallowed face, leaving the impression of an unkempt bag lady and yet she remains beautiful with a child-like innocence that shines in her strikingly vast chocolate brown eyes.

Upon entering Annie’s hell, I am at once filled with a spine tingling chill. Life seems to be sucked from me and bottomless desolation anchors me to the floor. I can hardly move from the weight of my misery. Vulgar musty air bounded within this icy cold room fills my lungs and I gasp, choking on the sorrow surrounding me. Chris’s pain at seeing his wife this way and terror of losing her forever makes my heart race with a nervous rhythm and saturates my soul with an undying urgency. I turn to Annie whose rag doll body screams with endless torment and grief over the loss of her loved ones. Death was to comfort her and now she will spend eternity refusing to come to grips with what she’s done. Self-persecution blocks her from perceiving that her beloved husband stands before her very eyes pleading to whisk her off to untold of realms where everlasting happiness and peace awaits. I feel her desperation to make sense of it all, her longing to get back to what is familiar and predominantly the sheer panic of what has been lost. She will forever remain alone, isolated from everything she once held dear.

My concern now turns towards my own life. Have there been times when my judgment was clouded? Do I spend even a moment reflecting on those things for which I should be grateful? Have I ever vanished into despair and self-loathing? Do I take into consideration the effects my choices have on others? How can I make sense of this life or the next? I’m positive these questions will continually reoccur throughout my life span. I dare to believe that at some point all of us have made these very same inquiries. For me the most important probing of the mind isn’t that of life, death or even God. It’s a question of love. How am I conveying love to this world? There are many things I can leave behind, money, sentimental items, property but nothing will speak louder than the words of my heart. Faith comforts us, hope inspires us but love remains our savior. It can reach out into the depths of hell, wage war on all things evil inside and around us then remarkably heave our carcass to the surface unscathed. The form of love, whether spiritual or physical, makes no difference. The majestic healer, with out reservation, is love. I challenge you to surrender you conceptions of what should be and simply call out to it with as much fervor as can be mustered. Allow yourself to be wrapped in the warm forgiving grace of love.