The Brick in My Pocket
(Everybody has one. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.)
Becca: Does it ever go away?
Nat: No, I don't think it does. Not for me, it hasn't—has gone on for eleven years. But it changes, though.
Becca: How?
Nat: I don't know... the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and... carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and—there it is.
Nat: ... So, you carry it around. And uh... it doesn't go away. Which is...
Becca: Which is what?
Nat: Fine, actually.
While watching the movie—and in the quiet moments afterward—my thoughts turned to my mother. Like Becca, my mother also lost a young child. And as portrayed in the film, the sorrow Becca carried mirrored my mother’s in ways that felt deeply familiar: the same aching silences, the same distant eyes, the same sense of holding on while everything else moved forward. My mother struggled to face the everyday rhythms of life, reshaped by a loss that never really left her—only settled in, like that brick in the pocket.
My younger brother died in 1966, at age 9. I was 12 then, and my elder brother was 14. His death was both tragic and horrific—he drowned in the large water well behind the school in our village. The well was originally meant for irrigating the school’s farm. It was so unfortunate that after he slipped into it and drowned, no one noticed for an hour or so, until his lifeless body surfaced. The incident shook our entire village; everyone gathered in our yard and stayed through the night mourning. One image from that night has stayed with me ever since: my father consoling my mother, hugging her, as my brother’s body was being taken away for burial. [The only other time I saw them hug was when they came to see me off as I was boarding the bus to the University.]
In the weeks that followed, my maternal grandmother came from the city to briefly stay with us, to help my mom overcome the grief. I still recall the instances they spent together, comforting each other. On my grandmother’s urging, unlike Becca, my mom began in the following months visiting an orphanage a few times to give away my deceased brother’s belongings (clothes, shoes, books, etc.) to the boys there. (In the movie, Becca burns them.)
From those days, there were several heartbreaking reminders. My brother and I would often find my mother sitting by herself behind the well in our backyard. She would prepare meals and habitually arrange the dinner plates for three. My brother and I were too young and had no means or words to console her, so we stayed as silent spectators. The two of us had our own struggles to face: an empty chair at our round study table, a missing hand at the carroms and card games, and so on.
As for my father, he began to regret his decision to move the family to the small village six years earlier. Added to his reasoning was my bout of double typhoid just a couple of years prior, which he attributed to the lack of proper health care in the village. Within five months of my brother's death, my father decided to move the family to a nearby town, on the pretext of admitting my brother into college. He also chose to occupy himself professionally by turning a longtime hobby into a vocation. This enormously helped him stay busy and provided the needed financial support.
As we settled into our new home in the town, we gradually got to know the family next door. The two houses were connected by shared porches, front and back, and before long, their three daughters and a little boy—I'll call him R, who was just three years younger than my deceased brother—began to spend more and more time with us. One afternoon, while my family gathered for lunch, R’s mother, tired of his restlessness, rushed in, placed him in my mother’s lap, and asked my mom to feed him. That simple gesture—unexpected and unspoken—sparked something. From that day on, R became almost another kid in our household, joining us for study times, on family outings, in social gatherings, movie nights, and so on.
It was not just my mother who found quiet comfort with him. For the three of us too, R became a gentle reminder of something lost and something still tenderly human. Like Becca in the movie, who forms an unlikely connection with the boy involved in her son’s death, my mother found a strange, wordless consolation in caring for R. It was not healing, exactly—but it was a way to keep moving, with that brick in the pocket.
I almost never spoke of my deceased brother with my parents—perhaps it was because of guilt. But after they were gone—after their deaths—I felt free to revisit our childhood memories, often sharing them with my elder brother. That continued until he passed away six years ago. Now, there is no one left to share those memories with, except for the occasional conversation with childhood friends. And so, the brick remains—quiet but ever-present—not as heavy now, but still there, reminding me of what was, and what still lives quietly within.
Shigehiro Oishi is a social psychologist at the University of Chicago. In his most recent book, Life in Three Dimensions, Prof. Oishi argues that a fulfilling life is not solely about maximizing happiness or even pursuing meaning, but also about cultivating psychological richness (which he equates with the third dimension). Through his research, he has demonstrated that negative events and emotions can lead to perspective changes, enabling a different view of the world—a key characteristic of a psychologically rich life. He connects experiences of misery and sorrow to this concept, suggesting that negative emotions and challenging experiences are not necessarily detrimental to a good life, but can be crucial to personal growth and gaining new perspectives.
Prof. Oishi’s insight gave me an authentic frame for understanding what I had long felt but had never been able to articulate—that even painful experiences can deepen the contours of our lives. The brick in the pocket may never go away, but perhaps it doesn’t need to (which is exactly what Nat implied to Becca in the movie). It is part of what makes a life not just bearable, or even meaningful, but textured, resilient, and quietly whole.
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