“OUCH”; or, A Letter To The Dead In Celebration Of Life

Dear Ms. Mathison,

We never met, and it is one of my great disappointments among a sea of disappointments. I believe the Writers Guild had intended to commemorate one of E.T.’s anniversaries with you in person. You got sick and then passed on, and I never got to say what I wanted to tell you for most of my life.

Simply, it’s that I had one and owe it, in ways both big and small, to the story you and Mr. Spielberg told the world back in 1982.

I was about three years old, a sick child born with Spina Bifida and a brain swelling dangerously against my skull. I needed several surgeries from the day I was born until that summer. I was afraid of doctors like Eliot was fearful of the scientists. I spent my childhood seemingly being taken apart and sewn back together.

No one should have to suffer like that, especially a child. I think of Eliot, all alone in the world, afraid that loneliness would follow him for the rest of his life because his parents were getting a divorce. My experience was different — my parents are still together after five decades, but the “ouch” of physical and psychic fissures, and the accompanying alienation, was something I undetstood all-too-welll.

My mother took me to your movie while recovering from the latest neurosurgery. I have a shunt in my head that helps the flow of cerebral fluid, and though having it malfunction or needing some adjustment due to growth has always been painful, this little tube has given me great relief.

I can imagine it was as much relief for my mother to see your movie as it was for me. As she tells it, I sat on her lap, and she had to keep pushing my clawing hands away from the itchy stiches keeping my scalp together. This was likely a thankless task because a three-year-old doesn’t understand much beyond “ouch” and making that “ouch” stop.

Then, something miraculous happened. You may not believe me, but here is where I have my earliest childhood memory.

My mother later said, as the movie began and the spaceship landed in a flood of rainbow lights illuminating the California evergreens, my hands fell to my sides, and I got really, really quiet.

What I experienced myself is something that has followed me all the rest of my days — defining how I see and create art, and how I move through life.

This is my first jolt of life: when that ship came down and stranded the terrified little alien in a strange and foreboding world, my body went from feeling to not feeling pain.

It was instantaneous.

I no longer felt the sutures or the annoying bandages protecting them. It was bliss, and the only thing I can liken it to throughout my life was falling in love for the first time, or the new reset given by Transcendental Meditation.

In other words, my consciousness began with this movie, and everything that followed — the ups and downs, the terror, the happiness — all stemmed from seeing a boy find a way to cope with forces larger than himself. If.E.T is about trying to overcome, it’s as though you helped write my script. You gave me my “FADE IN.”

As I grew older, softer, and more philosophical, I found a direct connection between the experience of art, especially movies, and the relief of pain. That is art’s principal function. You helped a suffering kid get that on the first bounce. It, I believe, rewrote the story for me because E.T. helped me become a part of the family of things, as Mary Oliver wrote. I was able to face loss and heartbreak — and boy, adulthood is full of that — head-on. Eliot’s story gave me a mirror of my struggles. Did you, or the movie, fix that? No, of course not. But it gave me the constant feeling I was never really alone in those struggles. Pain may not always be surmountable, but managing suffering is possible. It just takes a little belief and a lot of courage. E.T. taught me that.

I grew into a writer myself. I’ve written scripts and prose and poetry, detailing, in one way or another, my experience of being alive. It has had its fair share of darkness, but I know backing down from confronting those shadows would be disingenuous and insulting to your memory.

So, I go on.

I’d like to believe magical forces are at play, that the universe is conspiring with us, helping shape our narratives. Some call it God. I call it Film.

We thrive because of a possible larger story, and even if we don’t understand it, or it frustrates us or leaves us tired and afraid, the story continues.

I don’t know if that makes sense, but I think so.

Because you did what you did, I do what I do, though I’m not talking about a script. I’m talking about a life full of meaning, love, and strength, stemming from when you reached this sick little boy and told him it was okay for the moment.

So, I will leave you, Ms. Mathison, with one true thing, a single sentiment regarding forty years of relief, connecting, living, art, and E. T.

It’s this: If the only prayer you ever say your entire life is “Thank You,” that would suffice.

It is not sufficient, but I try. I always try.

With love and resolution,
Michael