Maybe I’m Wrong

March 25th, 2023

This is an essay about grief and, out of respect, I have to preface it with a spoiler warning for John Wick 4.

It’s only a line of dialogue, but it’s what got me thinking about this in the first place, and if you don’t want a frame of the new film exposed, this is your sign.

Now then.

There’s a scene in the movie where John Wick is in a church. This is after a scene in which many people die and before a scene in which many more people die. His friend Caine asks John if he’s talking to his dead wife by the candlelight (he is) and if he thinks she can hear him (he does not).

If he doesn’t think his wife can hear him, Caine wonders, then why is he speaking to her at all?

John sums it up in three words:

“Maybe I’m wrong.”

Nothing could explain my non-religious relationship with spirituality more.

I have spent my entire life unreligious, but extremely superstitious, knowing well that I don’t know what the answer is, and I could be wrong in rejecting any of the options.

I have read about more religions than most of the people in my circle, because the majority of the religious people I know figured the first one they got started with was the answer, and they never had any reason to question it.

Conversely, I have never stumbled upon any religion that makes sense or even feels right to me.

And that conflicts with the basic human want (or need) that there is something more than this (and after this).

The first time I saw a cardinal after my mom died, someone told me it was her visiting me. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard and I burst into tears in the bathroom shortly after.

What I know often conflicts with how I feel.

I talk to my mom all the time. Sometimes I catch my hands moving on the steering wheel, signing to her, wherever she is.

Do I think she can hear me? Any less than she could when she was here?

Probably not.

Maybe I’m wrong.