Abstract
This essay combines autoethnographic narratives along with the films of U.S. film director Wes Anderson to provoke and unlock a buried grief of serving as a pediatric hospital chaplain. Anderson is one of the most well-known U.S. film directors. Even if an individual has not seen one of his eleven feature-length films, his aesthetic, eccentricity, and production design are well known and have reached meme status on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Buried within the pastel pastiche are themes of grief and trauma. The author moves through these themes alongside Anderson’s cinematic universe and offer possibilities for communal care in an Andersonian manner.
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Notes
I have served as an army reserve chaplain since 2008. This has primarily been in a reserve context; therefore, I will focus on pediatric chaplaincy as vocation.
This essay contains stories of grief, loss, death, and dying.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a life support machine that provides respiratory and cardiac support for patients whose lungs and heart are unable to support this. ECMO facilitates the movement of blood through the body and keeps oxygen and carbon dioxide balanced.
Within pediatrics this level of differentiation and autonomy is key. As pediatric chaplain, Jessica Bratt Carle notes, “In the midst of a clinical gaze that has been so thoroughly conditioned by principlist ethics to regard children in terms of their lack... it has become all too easy to overlook other crucial facets of children’s identities, such as their rich relationships, their spiritual and emotional development, and the varied meanings they may draw from their medical experiences” (Bratt Carle, 2021, p. 608).
This essay contains spoilers.
In an interview, Anderson remarks that this temple is the one of the “most spiritual places in the world, supposedly” (Zoller Seitz, 2013, p. 209).
All names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
The brothers carry their fathers’ luggage around India until shedding it after the second feather ceremony. They literally and figuratively throw and discard the baggage of their deceased father.
This privileging the voices of children is what stalwart pastoral and practical theologian Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (2003) describes as a “feminist maternal theology” (p. xxxii).
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Morris, J.T. Wes Anderson, Unexamined Grief, and Pediatric Chaplaincy: An Autoethnographic Reflection. Pastoral Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01122-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-024-01122-1