It’s Friday the 13th. Like Barbra and Johnny I’m driving to rural western Pennsylvania to visit a cemetery. It must be October. I’m not a magazine reader (this has probably hampered my development as a writer [I prefer books]), but the October issue of The Christian Century is devoted to religion and horror. This morning I watched an interview with Jessica Mesman on her article on horror as therapy. In it she discusses her mother’s death. Since we have this in common, I was intrigued. Mesman states that studies substantiate that watching horror functions as therapy for people with PTSD. It has been suggested to me more than once that my career malfunction at Nashotah House led to PTSD. It may be no coincidence, then, that I started watching horror after that happened. When The Incarcerated Christian podcast was still going, I was interviewed three times and the topic was, broadly, how horror acts as therapy.
Until today I’ve had to work daily and then make arrangements for an unplanned trip to celebrate my mother’s life as I could. I’ve never met Jessica Mesman, but I sense that she would understand what I’m going through. As I grapple with grief, loss, and relief (my mother was ready to die, but I had been unable to see her for a few years because of the pandemic and other circumstances) what I feel I really need is to watch a horror movie or two. I have found—and 2023 has been a traumatic year for me—that when I’m feeling overwrought, taking ninety minutes to watch a horror film can get me back on track. It helps me cope.
None of this is intended as any disrespect for my mother, whom I love deeply. Although she didn’t read my books, she knew I watched monster movies as a kid. She occasionally grew annoyed with me when such things made me too clingy—she had two other sons and her own dying mother in our home and she was trying to keep it together with my father gone. Looking at photos of my young self, I wonder if that early loss of a parent translated to a kind of childhood PTSD. Once I’d successfully (?) made it to adulthood, Mom told me—“you were the one I worried about; you seemed to have difficulty adjusting.” I sought therapy in religion. I’ve dedicated my life to it. Until it too became a source of grief, horror, and pain. As I prepare to drive to her funeral, I’m pretty sure that Mom understands.
