On Patriotism, Grief, and Our Hearts
How Hamnet shows us the way forward
Warning: does include a few Hamnet spoilers, if you haven’t already read the book or seen the movie. Also, get on that. You can order that beautiful novel HERE from Bookshop and our bookshop, Nooks, will receive a portion of the sale.
At one point while watching the movie Hamnet last night, I was so overcome with grief I had to pull my sweatshirt up over my face and sob quietly while the show rolled on. I reached that point where the sadness approached in a wave from far off, and when it arrived there was nothing to stop it. I’m still not entirely sure where it came from—I’ve watched other devastatingly sad movies before without this kind of response. My shoulders shook.
Who knows what it is that can so precisely move us in such a powerful way? Who knows the formula to make art reach down inside and leave a 49-year-old man trying his darnedest not to absolutely lose control and ugly cry in a way that would concern every other person in the theater?
There is no formula. That’s how it catches us unawares.
Maybe it was the phenomenal acting by Jessie Buckley playing the grieving Agnes. Her heartfelt scream at that death, her reaching out at the end, was the depths of grief personified. Maybe it was the moving, slow nature shots, the wind in the trees, the hawk soaring through low clouds. The realistic nature of Agnes’ relationship with her husband, the frustrations, the love, the sense that we are all ships passing in the night.
Maybe my emotion rose because of Little Hamnet in the movie and how much he reminds me so much of our 11-year-old, with the twinkle in his eye, the willingness to cry, the quick attentiveness with anything that interests him.
There is something about an 11-year-old boy that exists in two places at once, not quite a teenager, no longer simply a child. Our son’s mind stretches curiously out into the world these days, and confronts worldly things, and reaches tentatively to see what it will find, and is too often rebuffed with cruelty and cynicism and callous adults or fellow children who scorn such simplicity. And yet he also encounters whimsical delights and beauty and a glimpse of what the world could give him.
It takes so much bravery to be a young person.
I will be brave, little Hamnet says.
I came up out of my sweatshirt and took off my glasses and took the tissues Maile offered. The main wave passed and I felt numb. I watched as Agnes entered Shakespeare’s Globe, as she took up the playbill and saw what she saw.
What can we do when confronted with such sadness?
“I don’t understand,” she said to her brother. “I don’t know what to do.”
He looked at her quietly and said four words I have not forgotten.
“Keep your heart open.”
The same eleven-year-old is playing youth basketball this year for the first time and they invited all the young players to a varsity game, so we showed up to the high school gym with all the other youngsters and cheered on the older kids.
Just before the game began, a potentially awkward moment settled on us in the form of complete silence. The National Anthem was supposed to begin playing over the loudspeakers, but nothing happened. We all stood there quietly, hats off. People cleared their throats in the liminal space. Looked around. Chuckled nervously. I was reminded again of how uncomfortable we are with silence in this culture.
One of the game officials looked around and, realizing the music wasn’t going to start playing, raised his hand.
“Okay, I think we all know the words,” he said in a commanding voice, and then he began.
Oh say can you see…
He did not have a good singing voice, and he did not start it in an octave that was particularly conducive to everyone singing along. I didn’t think anyone else was going to join him.
And yet, we did. The folks dressed like farmers in their jeans and flannel shirts, the soccer moms with their nails and hair done, the jocks and the band kids and every other one. The student section belted it out. The players on the benches joined.
Voices rose, and we sang, a spontaneous performance. And for the first time in a long time, I felt something—patriotic, perhaps, or maybe just part of a community. But just as soon as I felt that, I felt weird about it, because even though I do love the United States, I hate what we’ve become recently.
Innocent people murdered by federals officers in the streets.
This is what happens when you resist federal officers. It’s a very very bad idea.
Refugees here legally being deported.
This is what happens when you leave your home country. They don’t belong here.
Rights trampled by abuses of power.
This is what happens when you speak up. You will get steamrolled. It’s the natural order.
Too many feelings. When everyone stopped singing, a lot of people cheered. I sighed.
Six years ago, I read Charlotte’s Web to our youngest son for the first time. We read one chapter every night, and he fell in love with Charlotte immediately. When we got to the page just before Charlotte dies, he put his little hand in the book and demanded that I stop reading.
“Leo, we have to finish the chapter,” I said. “We’re almost there.”
He kept protesting. It was unlike him. I couldn’t tell if he was entirely serious or not, so I finished the chapter.
As soon as I read the last sentence–“No one was with her when she died”–he burst into tears, and we just sat there, the two of us, his head leaning over on my chest, sobs shaking his skinny body, tears dampening my shirt. Outside, the city was quiet, the street lights shining through the window.
No one was with her when she died.
I don’t know what to do in this world anymore. I don’t know what to say or how to say it. I don’t know how to feel—I want to reach out and stop the next page from being read, put my hand in the book and pretend that Charlotte isn’t going to die alone.
But something keeps telling me.
Keep your heart open.
At the end of Hamnet Agnes is grieving as she watches the play, but something transcendent happens as she experiences the death of Hamlet on stage: her grief is transformed. She reaches out for him, as does everyone else in the audience. And in that reaching, you see that every single person in the crowd is dealing with their own grief, their own sadness, their own desperation, and this play, remarkably, unexpectedly, has helped them all. They weep, but there is healing there as they grieve alongside one another.
In the same way that Agnes, watching the play, was able to begin moving through her grief, I, while watching Hamnet, could do the same. I guess I didn’t know how much grief I had in me—the general grief that comes with raising children, or living in community with people you love, or living in a country where atrocities are happening at greater and greater rates. The pain around us is palpable.
What can I do in the face of such sadness, such overpowering evil?
Like Leo, I can cry.
Like the crowd, I can sing.
Like Agnes, I can reach out towards the suffering ones.
I don’t understand. I don’t know what to do.
Keep your heart open.
Again, make sure you read Hamnet.
Such ache and such beauty, Shawn. Thank you for working so hard to share these deeply human moments.
We were watching the PBS Kids show Martha Speaks. It was the Thanksgiving episode where orphan Martha learns that her Mother sat by the same spot waiting for her children to return year after year. My saw that my 8 year old was troubled but this plot point, but it was only hours later—just before lights out—that he opened up about the grief he felt for the mother character. He was aching for her.
But your post here connects the dots for me. I know this stuff but I need to be reminded. These stories help our hearts practice being human, being open hearted to the pangs of others… it is vital work. My son grieving a mother dogs grief, your son grieving Charlotte’s dying alone.
I’m studying counseling and trauma. Having an attentive witness to our pain transforms how our bodies encode the experience. Oh, God, may we be attentive witnesses to the pain around us!
Thank you. Yes. We are all carrying so much unprocessed grief.