Lately in my journey exiting young-adulthood, I've been thinking about the relationship I have with my mother versus the one I have my father. As a child of divorce you end up having distinctly different relationships with each parent instead of lumping them together as simply "your parents." I love both of my parents; I would say I have an ideal relationship with both despite their separation for half of my life, but every day I'm discovering the nuances of each relationship and what events I've chosen to unconsciously paint them with.
Goodbye, Eri is a one-shot manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the mangaka of acclaimed and current biggest-thing-on-Earth title Chainsaw Man. Fujimoto has a way of depicting his character's anxieties as believable, relatable, and worthy of reflection both within and between his panels of expressive ultra-violence. Goodbye, Eri and at least one other one-shot from Fujimoto (the excellent Look Back) shows that Fujimoto is flexible in displaying those aforementioned quality depictions of anxiety and trauma from a long-form action series to a shorter-form drama.
The crux of Goodbye, Eri is main character Yuta's short-film depiction of his mother through the final years of her life before she succumbs to terminal illness. It's shown as an intentionally candid look into his mother's last days where we see all the small, happy moments in life despite her short time left: family outings, cooking, watching TV, a stray cat on the road, and the reality of making return visits to the hospital. The film ends with Yuta not being able to accept filming his mother's death, instead running away from the hospital where his mother is admitted before it dramatically explodes behind him. Yuta is lambasted by the student body and members of the school staff for the film being a highly insensitive send-off to his deceased mother. Yuta chooses to commit suicide because he is unable to accept the criticism of his film, but is stopped by a mysterious girl named Eri on the rooftop of the hospital his mother died in.
It's revealed in the second half of the manga that Yuta's mother was actively abusive during filming. Controlling every aspect of the process save for Yuta's final edit that he shows to the school. Yuta mentions that he combed through hundreds of hours of film footage that include both the melancholic, yet beautiful depictions of his mother's final moments of every day life, and the verbal abuse he had to endure in order for his mother to be happy with the end-product. Yuta's father was aware of all this happening, he even admits that his wife was seldomly pleasant, and is shocked as to why Yuta chose to create a film in which his mother is inaccurately portrayed as a loving parent and partner. I wondered myself until Yuta's father tells him that "you have the power to decide for yourself...How you'll remember someone. That's an incredible thing" which made me realize how much, and how subconsciously I've been choosing forgiveness over anger.
My mother is the sweetest person I know. I was a prototypical mama's boy for my entire childhood because she spoiled the hell out of me. Sometimes when I went to a friend's for a sleepover I would anxiously call my mom to come pick me up because I couldn't handle being separated from her for so long. My parents' divorce was about half my life ago and I decided to live with my father until I went off to school 4-5 years after. Ever since then I've seen sides to my mom I had never seen before. A constant, always-brewing anger towards my dad and my eventual stepmother would more often than not send her into an explicit tirade that my sister and I (and anyone in the immediate vicinity) would have to listen and nod our heads at. Since I've been an adult, my mother has been more someone I've had to speak to than someone I could easily confide in. Every piece of news I bring back to her seems to be met with ambivalence, questions about why I'm not making more money or why I look like I've gained weight, comparisons to my sister who has a higher-paying job and a decent social life, and any combinations of that news with any other member of my extended family. It feels like she still thinks of me as that same kid holding her hand, maybe betrayed by the fact that I decided to go live with my father so long ago and can therefore never muster any praise for me. We still have a good relationship, but there's been a distance between us that I've only recently started reflecting upon.
My father is maybe the coolest person I know. If there was a rock or metal group that went through Austin in the 80s, he partied with them and supplied the pot to go with them. He's been a successful construction superintendent at least as long as I've been alive so it's difficult to gleam any of this about him until you've had an informal conversation with him. I don't believe my dad was ready for fatherhood, or at least he made it apparent that he didn't love the idea. If I had to agree with any part of my mother's outrage, it would certainly be the fact that he was also not a good husband. Outside of weekends and some family vacations, I don't remember seeing much of my dad until I was a teenager. My dad would often come home from work, have dinner with the family to know the small details of what was going on in our lives, and go out to some variation of "poker night with the guys." Even when I did see them on the weekends, he put a lot of his time into my sister, the sports star of the family. As any sports-loving dad tries to do, he put both me and my sister into sports at an early age; my sister excelled and my fate was sealed as an indoor-kid for standing around listlessly in the outfield of little league. For a long time I just accepted that my dad chose his favorite child and kept it lighthearted enough that I never felt anger or resentment towards him; I had my mother and my sister had my father. When the divorce happened, I made the decision to live with my dad and my eventual-stepmother. My mother was upset and begged me to reconsider, but I decided that I wanted to have a relationship with my father. Pretty much my whole time from high school to leaving the house for college, my dad and I formed a strong bond that holds to this day. I was and still am able to talk to him about music, politics, media, nearly anything. He tells me he's proud of me every day still, he gives me advice to help me navigate adulthood, and it genuinely feels like he's trying to atone for not being there for me or my mom as I was growing up.
Goodbye, Eri showed me what power forgiveness has in life. That despite remembering the abuse, the trauma, any and all the ways that someone has hurt you - forgiveness heals wounds and constantly picking at them can only make them worse. I can't force my mom to forgive my dad for, in her opinion, tearing the family apart. I can and have chosen to forgive how she has treated me since the separation. I can't force her to forgive this mirror image of the person who hurt her, but I can choose to understand and maybe have the courage to tell her how it all makes me feel one day. Yuta chose to show the world what he decided was his mother as he wants her to be remembered, and although I have shared a lot in this post, I'm writing right now that I choose to remember my mom as someone whose hand I always held and followed everywhere as a kid. The same, and sometimes only person who was there for me through every anxiety attack and every parent-teacher meeting to acknowledge how proud they were of me.
Goodbye, Eri showed me that you can acknowledge the flaws in a person but still choose to remember what you love about them. Yuta didn't need to show the world the Eri with glasses and anger issues, just the girl who inspired him to keep living and to keep making art. I don't need to remember the dad who wasn't there for me when I cried at night because I was bullied at school, or the one who hurt my mother that would lead to the divorce. I choose to remember the father who texts me every day that they're proud of me, even when I'm not proud of myself, and the one who has shown that he knows how much he's hurt the people who love him.
Sometimes life just needs a pinch of fantasy.
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