Harnessing Grief book trailer

A talented friend and colleague who is a filmmaker, and has insisted on anonymity, created this book trailer about the book.

I wrote the text for the voiceover in 30 minutes and my friend recorded the narration in less than an hour, then I scoured my computer for photos and videos. He asked for some images we had not seen before. I discovered a treasure trove of videos and photos from my phone, hidden on an Google drive. I had not seen them in years.

When Cal was first diagnosed, and she started to get so sick so fast, I told Pat to hide all the photos of Cal when she walked and talked and fed herself. Most people, who did not know our family back in 2010 or 2011, had no idea how healthy and strong she appeared, how subtle the signs of the disease were. Back when Cal first got diagnosed, our survival demanded an amnesia about our old lives. I would tell PJ and Camille to live with no past or future, and to train ourselves to be grateful for what the disease had not taken. Much to my amazement, excavating these images was not painful or sad, it was like discovering a time capsule and trying to reconstruct the artifacts of our old life. There was no pain in seeing our old lives, to be sure, I don’t remember that woman.

The videos have amazed many people who did not realize how healthy and strong Cal appeared before the MLD revealed itself. But maybe these home movies did not hurt because they are undeniable evidence of our family’s courage, and, even after everything that had happened, MLD had not destroyed us; no matter how hard it has tried.