Biutiful

A good friend of mine has for years told me that she's afraid to have children because she doesn't feel ready to take on so much responsibility. At its most basic, the responsibility that you have as a parent is to keep your children alive - and to keep yourself alive. The concept of mortality suddenly becomes very real. Another good friend of mine a few days wrote about a health scare she had. She's a mom of two small kids. I had some health issues during the past year, as most readers of this blog know, and as a mom of three small kids, I often felt: scared. Once we become parents, we never cease to be parents - no matter what happens to our children. But the opposite is also true: we never cease to be the children of our parents - no matter what happens to our parents. It's not easy to let go, I'm certain, although I've thankfully never had to experience any such loss.

Not knowing what I was getting into, I watched the film "Biutiful" last night, with Javier Bardem, in spanish (I don't understand spanish, so I watched with subtitled, I just wanted to highlight that it's a spanish and not Hollywood film). The main topic is mortality of parents. And what this means for both parents and small children. Heavy stuff, in other words - but also "biutiful", as the title states. 

Is it true that you can only truly value what you have when you realize you could lose it?