“If you strike me down…
I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars.
This is a fictional quote from Star Wars, and it may mean more than any of us can imagine. Remember this, for you may find it more true than you would want to acknowledge.
As his mother, I’m not likely to ever want Owen to be more powerful in death, than in life. I wish it were not so, yet it may be true. (Who am I to judge whether the afterlife is more powerful than this?)
I would give my life to change where we are. I can’t, so I move forward knowing that Owen’s story is something I can’t predict, deny, nor delay. I watch his impact daily, and I collect the memories as though they were gold. They are, in fact, golden.
I have a movie to watch tonight. It’s not Star Wars. Owen and Nat watched those movies so often (all of them), and I feel confident I can quote most of the lines, having not only watched them in theaters and solitary sittings in our living room, but because they were a frequent background to our comfortable lives.
Danny, my first husband, and I stood in line for hours to see the original Star Wars movie many years ago, outside the Cinedome in Hollywood. I don’t remember the year, but it was in the mid-70s, before I met Michael (Nat’s and Owen’s father). Many years later, Nat and Owen became fans – far beyond the kinds of fans Michael and I were.
My movie for the evening is one I’ve avoided watching for weeks now. Stand by Me, as I’ve mentioned before, is one of those movies I find it hard to watch. Hard, because Owen and Nat knew this script, too. They knew the lines, the scenes, the settings, and they knew the message.
Obi-Wan’s message in Star Wars, though, is something Nat and I can no longer avoid, in Owen’s absence. “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.” I can’t explain how true this is for our family. We did not strike Owen down. But, someone, or something did. Society, even, could be the something. We may never know.
We believe Owen knew this life was less powerful than the one he was entering. And, he shows himself to us, often, in all his new-born power.
Song for the night: Surrender, Evanescense
http://youtube.com/watch?v=70fgaudossc
