Hamnet and the Sorrow of Loss

Personal reflections after a film…

Jessie: Losing a son at thirteen… it’s a devastation that never fully settles. Watching Agnes lose Hamnet felt like watching myself from a distance.
Paul: For me it was similar. My son is still alive—forty‑five now—but the boy he was disappeared when he was fifteen. The schizophrenia‑like symptoms took him somewhere I can’t follow.
Jessie: You’ve said before it feels like living with a ghost.
Paul: Thirty years of it. A ghost of a son who once laughed, once argued, once dreamed. The film stirred that ache again, the ache of losing someone who still breathes.
Jessie: That’s a particular kind of sorrow. People don’t always understand that kind of loss.
Paul: They think grief requires a funeral. But grief can be a long corridor with no door at the end. But Shakespeare, his way was to write through it. That struck me. I’ve spent years trying to make sense of my son’s disappearance into illness, trying to understand something from it.
Jessie: The film seemed to suggest a way to hold sorrow without being crushed by it.
Paul: Yes. The ending especially. The way grief became a kind of offering, a way to honour the child rather than drown in the loss.
Jessie: I found myself thinking: maybe devastation can be rearranged. Not erased, but rearranged into something that lets us keep walking.
Paul: That’s what I felt too. That my son’s ghost doesn’t have to haunt me; he can accompany me. Not as absence, but as a presence transformed.
Jessie: And that love doesn’t vanish with the child. It just changes its shape, like water flowing.
Paul: Shakespeare said, “Give sorrow words.”
Jessie: And, “The rest is silence.”  Knowing that silence, too, can be a kind of healing.
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Voice-over
Overtones of Ophelia. Her drowning, being pulled under by loss, was perhaps a metaphor for Hamnet succumbing to a fever. And the film adding themes of parental grief, absence, and giving sorrow shape through art.

Horse to Harlequin 2

 A deepening rebellion…

René: But after turning forty-five last year, Giles changed. It was abrupt. He lost his engineering job. Now he has no job. He dresses in women’s clothes, some of them bright and theatrical, almost like a harlequin. He puts on blouses, scarves, patterned tights, painted shoes. Is this rebellion? Confusion? Madness? 
Li: It may be none of those. Clothing can be a symbol, release, play, identity, grief, delayed adolescence, or a way to meet neglected parts of the self. The harlequin style especially suggests theater—many faces, hidden sorrow behind bright colors. 
René: Then what should I do? I feel embarrassed, worried about his future. 
Li: First, separate your fear from his reality. Ask whether he is kind, functioning, honest, and safe. If yes, then the matter is not emergency but understanding. Second, keep talking to him. Not interrogation. Third, encourage a skilled counselor if he is distressed. 
René: And from a Chinese perspective, is there a remedy? 
Li: Balance. Less judgment, more conversation. Less obsession with appearances, more attention to spirit. Invite him to share tea, not defend himself. A son may wear strange colors and still be searching for harmony. If the father becomes calm, sometimes the son no longer needs to shout through costuming. 
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Voice-over
Macho to Androgyny?  René is not a villain, Giles is not a punchline, and Li is not a lecturer. Each person carries part of the truth. Concern without cruelty, insight without certainty, and enough ambiguity to feel true to life.