Lovely Bones

I watched the movie Lovely Bones yesterday. It was a great movie with a magical twist for a murder story thriller. What i loved most about the movie is that it made it less morose than it could have been. Yes, it was nevertheless heart wrenching, but there was comfort to it.

What affected me most about the movie is, albeit all the magical scenes of how heaven could be like, the story is really common, realistic, and it could happen to us any time. The world is a sick place and it grows sicker by the day. It is contorted how God's greatest creation is also the greatest destruction weapon He could have ever made. The free will that was given to us and us only, has been more often used in guiltless pleasure of inflicting pain.

As i watched the movie. I thought of a story that occurred in my life when I was little. I remember the period of time when my mother used to work in Singapore. Back in the days, there were no cell phones and transportation was bad. It often took my mother two hours to get home from just across the causeway. My father would always ride his motorcycle to the bus stop to fetch my mom after work from where the bus would drop her off.

One night, when we had our often power cuts, the whole neighborhood was dark and quiet. And my father had fallen fast asleep and forgotten to pick my mother up. I must have been 5 or 6. So my mother waited for him, and decided that she would walk home anyway. I remembered the booming arguments when she got home. She walked in fear and pitch darkness for one kilometer back to our house. She was angry because my dad had slept off. But i suspected that she was more angry because of the heighten anxiety of walking home alone in the dark, fearing an attack on her anytime should she be unlucky.

The next morning, a naked girl's body was found in the scrubs at the empty plot of land my mother walked passed the previous night. Brutally murdered, raped and soul-less. She was murdered approximately the same time my mother walked pass that plot of land. She was only 15 years old. She was somebody's daughter. She was a child.

I remembered the tears in my mother's eyes. But i couldn't understand why. Thinking back, it could have been tears of relieve that it wasn't her. My mother was after all, quite an attractive woman when i was younger. But it could also be tears of guilt. That the girl's life was taken instead of hers. It could have been tears of fear, that I was a growing child and she would now never have her mind at ease as long as i was out of her sight.

The neighborhood changed from that day onwards. Children weren't on the streets playing. Parents would be lining up at the bus stops picking their kids up. Husbands extra vigilant. The neighborhood where most of the houses weren't gated starting building gates, to better protect their family. I for one, was never allowed to go out and play again. The murderer was never caught. And the family of the deceased girl moved out eventually, overcame by grief of living in a place where their child's life was taken away, just like that.

Back then, I never understood the paranoia. To me, it was an unfortunate accident. But today, i finally understand it. I can finally understand the reason why my parents were protective and paranoid.

The worst thing that can happen to someone is to lose a child to murder. To comprehend why people would take a life of someone pure and innocent. I used to worry that i would be a bad mother. That my children would be drug addicts, or become drunks. But to think of it now, it doesnt seem so bad after all. It's better than losing them. Not knowing what exactly went through their minds at that last breath that they took. It's pure agony. It's a guilt that will eat you alive because you couldn't trade places with them. When i think of all the faces that were put up on milk cartons. And the incessant search of the lost kids by parents who will never give up. It tears me into pieces. This world is a sick place. Dripping with vermin and iniquity lurking at every corner.

I think that all teenagers should watch this movie. To learn to be wary of strangers or even the people they know. There's a time and place to learn and experience and as much as i have always been a firm believer that children should experience life with minimal retrictions, there's also safety measures that should be taken. It pays to be safe than sorry...