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So, she’s floating along in her underwear, and we folks in the theater seats have begun to calm down a little bit from all the nauseating, creepy, and terrifying things the Creature has done to make life miserable for those characters on that unfortunate space ship.

If Sigourney can relax (we think) then the movie makers have taken pity on us, on our shredded nerves, and have given us this chance to relax, happy to see our heroine get home safe and sound with her cat and her sanity intact. John Hurt may have had an alien creature burst through his stomach, blood and guts flying everywhere, but we in the audience are whole….not much n the mood for popcorn anymore, but with healthy stomachs nonetheless. We are safe.

And then….and THEN?
Here He (or She) comes again and the battle continues for survival: the Creature had hitched a ride on the safety shuttle and was hiding in the rafters, waiting to make us all scream again with its persistence and evil intentions….its never-ending hunger for our destruction.

That movie and that scene were the subjects of my therapy for months afterward.

Grappling with the true fact of life – that bad things often come back to torture us- was a major subject in my search for psychological peace for years, and if I am to be honest, it still is an ardent desire: that things be peaceful, that cancers don’t return as mine has yet to, that people we love do not die, that Trump will eventually disappear from the face of this earth, that Life is a happy fun thing. So, naturally, when a popular film like ALIEN comes along to remind us we are never really safe unless we struggle to finally get that THING off our space ship, it sticks in the popular mind as it certainly has stayed in mine.

To balance out that dire truth , it is also so that those we love never actually leave us, even though their bodies may die. I talk to my dearest friend Paul -my friend of fifty years, once husband- every day, even though it’s been almost a year since he has departed this earth. When he first left my earthly hugging space, I died with sadness inside at the thought of never seeing or hearing his voice again, but now i know: i can talk to him anyway, i can hear his voice clearly and almost smell his morning tea, i can be with him, even though…even though……yes, i do believe, Paul is hiding in my rafters, watching over me.

How could i have ever thought he’d really be gone from my life?

And, finally, since we are all made of stardust anyway, with a few sprinkles of Mozart and Shakespeare within each and every one of us, is anything really ever gone? Or , as the Buddhists teach, does nothing ever truly cease existing? Honestly, in my core of beliefs, i think not.

I do believe we all endure , recycle and re-create ourselves to become our next best thing.
We are are own Creatures, for better or worse, and we somehow always hang on.
Always.