Band of Brothers
I bought this series on DVD well over a year ago, but hadn’t got to watching it yet. I’d seen it originally when it came out, though missed at least one episode due to Tivo problems.
It was interesting to compare and contrast the first time I saw it with now. It still makes me all emotional, and sometimes just a lil’ weepy. Imagine the sacrifice these guys went through. I have a little better perspective on taking fire now, and it was a bit ironic to find I had to stop playback for a minute during one of the battle scenes, because we had a small bit of incoming at that time.
When I first watched it, it was in the house, sitting on a nice couch, looking at a decent TV. Over the course of time, I moved out of that house, and stayed with my folks who did not have HBO. I came back and watched it on Tivo while future ex-wife was out of the house. This was around October of 2001. It got to be where the kids (you know, the cats) would sit with me, because they didn’t get to see me very often anymore. That just made it worse, because when you’d hit one of those emotional moments, I’d feel that, how much I missed the kids, and even her, and how my life that I had worked so hard for had completely fallen apart. I was really a mess back then.
Now? I’m definitely watching it in different conditions. I live in a container, sitting on my bed, watching BoB on my laptop screen. I can watch it whenever I want, I don’t have to worry about any missing episodes, and while I am alone, I know that will be over before too long. I have a future ahead of me, not some horrible murky cloud that makes me doubt so many things I took for simple and reliable truths. I still miss the kids and think of them, but I have not seen them since the end of January 2002 except in pictures, and never will again. You may think it’s silly to think so much of some animals, but they were part of my family. I definitely feel better about things. It’s funny to think, but the fact that I have my own “room” that shares a bathroom with another “room” in the container, it feels like my own space. I haven’t felt like that in a long time. It only gets better. I do still feel echoes of the past, and I wonder how long they will be there.
I guess this wasn’t really about Band of Brothers much at all.
