Forrest Gump Made Me Cry

I did not know that Forrest Gump the movie is heart-wrenching.

I read the book eons ago and did not bother watching the film,  thinking that widescreen adaptations are usually mediocre to the paperback.  I felt, for good reason, that there is something like a hex on movies based on bestsellers that make them inferior and disappointing.

However, I was expecting the movie, though it may not be as engaging as Winston Groom's book, to be at least also hilarious.  The book was so funny I was laughing so hard while reading it made my side ache.

I could not forget that part where Forrest said that after several attacks on their camp, the Vietcongs stopped, perhaps realizing that if America was so willing to drop Napalm bombs on their own men, it would have no qualms in doing so on its enemies.  Reading that book was really an  ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) moment.

So I watched the film one night here in Jakarta, where I work away from family and friends, expecting to be guffawing all the way.

That did not happen, though.  Forrest Gump made me cry.

Seeing the different emotions that he tried to control and hide cross his face after learning that he has a son, and saying the boy was the "most beautiful thing" he ever saw, I just could not help but  shed tears.

I may be emotional, a cry baby if you want,  but that scene struck a chord, and the quivering string in my heart just made those tears fall.

I realized I so sorely missed my children after several agonizing months without seeing them personally and hugging them close.

Yes there is the Internet, the most important discovery of the century, but seeing the kids and their ebullient faces on the computer screen is not enough balm to soothe the pang created by the distance.

Why am I here? Why did I quit my job as a media worker to work in a foreign country whose language I am so unsuccessfully trying to learn?   

Because I want to earn more for my family and be a better provider.

 That is also the reason why millions of Filipinos leave the Philippines and be branded by some quarters as traitors for opting to work in strange lands instead of helping our own country grow.

But who would want to suffer through every waking moment by being away from our precious loved ones if only we can earn better near them?  Not the Filipinos, if they could help it, because family is the world for them.

And while toiling abroad results in happily ever after for many, there are also sad stories, like broken families and children going astray as drug addicts or law-breakers because the parents were  not there to properly guide them to maturity.

One sad story I know was that of my daughter's classmate during nursery school. Both the poor girl's parents worked abroad, so money problem was out of the question.  She did not finish the school year, though.  She died of kidney failure. We were told she actually just bore through the discomforts and the pain silently and secretly.

Her grandmother, who did not know better,  did not bring her to the hospital when her temperature soared. The old woman thought it was just one of those fevers associated with growing up that would as soon just go away.  It was the child who left her family for good.

That is why I am so lucky I have a loving and doting wife who sacrificed a lot, self actualization among them, just so she will be there to take charge of and take care of our kids.

I can sleep soundly knowing the kids are in the best of hands.

But the fear is always there.  Because who would take care of my wife if she is stricken ill?  Who would be there for her, to defend her and shield her from life's tribulations, when I am away?

I promised to man and God that I will be there for her.

That is why Forrest Gump so made me cry.