ON THURSDAY, Rosemary Smith's documentary "Space Between
Breaths," about the sorrows of parents whose children die early and the
process of healing, plays at the Regent Theatre in Arlington. Smith came to
the project after her two oldest sons, both teenagers at the time, were
killed in a car accident in 1992. Massachusetts native Cindy Bullens,
who wrote the score for the documentary, will perform live before the movie.
That's at 7 p.m. (781-646-4849 and www.
regenttheatre.com).
You can read the full article
here (The
Boston Globe).
The film opens with a series of snapshots, snippets of home movies, and
an impending sense of utter sorrow.
A teenage boy smiles on a couch. A little girl with a white ribbon in her
hair beams in a flowery dress. A freckle- faced boy tilts his head and
squints in an innocent smile. A young man does a back flip into a swimming
pool.
As the images roll by, you realize that each one captures a happy moment
in the life of someone who is dead.
The pictures continue. One shows a 5-year-old boy in a Bugs Bunny
T-shirt, making a funny face as he pulls his hand, gooey with pumpkin guts,
out of his Halloween creation and his younger brother throws open his mouth
in unbridled little-boy joy. Later, the boy wears a life jacket that looks a
little too big as he smiles at the controls of a boat. And still later, he
appears again - much older now, a red Santa's hat on his head, his younger
brother snuggling with Cassie, their Chesapeake Bay retriever, in front of
the Christmas tree.
That boy's name is Matt Kechter. He was killed eight years ago today in
the library at Columbine High School.
And his mom and dad, Ann and Joe Kechter, hope their involvement in the
forthcoming documentary Space Between Breaths will somehow help others see
that they can face their grief, that they can go on with their lives.
"That," Ann said, "you can suffer the most incomprehensible event and
still have hope for the future."
You can read the full article about our documentary and
the Kechters who lost their son Matthew at Columbine on 4/20/1999
here (Rocky Mountain News).
In the movie Space Between Breaths, there's a moment where a
grieving woman who has lost her young daughter to cancer recalls the second
she decided not to yield to her grief and let herself die.
She hears a truck coming. She realizes the driver will not see her before
the truck hits her, and knows that she can finally end her pain.
In that space between breaths, she decides that she will live.
The death of a child is unfathomable, a despair that changes every
succeeding moment. Rosemary and Luther Smith of Beattyville found themselves
dealing with that grief, multiplied, when they lost two of their three sons
in a traffic accident on the Mountain Parkway almost 15 years ago.
The tragedy led to Rosemary Smith's volunteer work now, scouring
newspapers looking for parents who have lost children and offering them
packages of information -- which include her own book on grieving parents, a
video, CD and a looseleaf notebook featuring poetry and inspirational
sayings.
It also led the Smiths to produce the movie Space Between Breaths,
in which bereaved parents from around the nation talk about how their
children died and how they went on to celebrate the memories of the children
they lost.
You can read the full article
published on Memorial Day on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader
here.
