grief – Ainsley MacIntyre

25 Years of Pixar Tears: Ranking The Top Ten Saddest Moments (10-6)

I wrote yesterday about the significance the Toy Story movies have had for me at various moments throughout my life, and the general reverence I have for the culture of creativity that Pixar has fostered. This list of the studio’s saddest ten moments was originally supposed to be attached, but because brevity is a skill I have not been blessed with, I thought I’d break it up in the interest of giving your reading/crying eyes break. In fact, two breaks. Please enjoy items ten through six today (as much as you can, considering we’re discussing moments of unfathomable sadness), and check back for five through one tomorrow.

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The Art That Changed My Life: On The Goldfinch, grief & my grandfather

Before and after. Everything is before and after. And the middle is The Goldfinch.

I started reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch the night before my grandfather suffered a major fall that put him in the hospital. I finished it two and a half weeks later, on the morning of his funeral.

Each of the days in between felt slow, suffocating in their sad sameness. I remember them now as a blur of anxious interactions with doctors and nurses, brief bursts of futile optimism and long hours of reading by his hospital bedside. I remember a numbness so deep I suspected it might be permanent. To feel anything at all during that time took intentional prodding. I listened to music too loud. I took showers too hot. And I read The Goldfinch.

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