It was when my youngest daughter didn’t come to the dinner table one night that the terror really began.

She was unable to get out of her bed because the curvature of her spine had somehow locked her into a position from which she couldn’t escape. We had made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor, but that was still months–and hundreds of miles–away.

Poor Charlee’s scoliosis had progressed at such a quick pace that, by the time we did get in to see the doctor, back braces were out of the question. Nothing would be as effective as spinal fusion surgery.

When my children were younger, I always wondered how parents dealt with scary and horrible situations involving their kids. These things become the worst kind of fear for parents, who lose a bit of their own identity and tend to live only for their progeny. How do they deal with major surgery like this? Or death?

The answer is grimly simple: they deal with it because they have to. It just has to be done, and so it is.

Poor Charlee proved to not be poorly at all. The majority of her spine was wrenched into a straight line and secured in place by being pinned to two titanium rods. When she regained her faculties post-surgery she continually rejected the opioids being offered to her, and insisted on getting out of the hospital bed to navigate the hospital hallways on foot. The girl wanted to go home! I initially believed that the nurses and doctors must tell every parent that their kid is recovering incredibly well, but once Charlee started showing her determination, I knew that they meant it.

Sitting in a waiting room during such an invasive surgery was probably the worst part for us. I’ll never try to compare our misery to her own, but I can really only speak to my own experience anyway, right?

I won’t lie: even when my kids were getting their tonsils out, I worried about the possibility of losing them during their somewhat innocuous surgeries. This was a different beast completely, and I was dreadfully afraid that this beast was going to eat Charlee whole. That we’d have to drive home with one less kid, forever changed and only living through the next day because, yes, it just has to be done.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I signed up for an entry to the 2025 Musicbed challenge,my fear of losing a child had grown in the dark recesses of my brain into a sickly, greasy stalk of “what if she did die?” You try that kind of idea on in your mind to see if you could mentally handle it. I know the answer would never be affirmative–and I think we all do when we endure this kind of self-torture–but we do it nonetheless. Maybe it’s some kind of buffer we set up for ourselves for when one of us is inevitably dealt life’s most unlucky card.

Musicbed (not a sponsor) is a website that offers royalty-free music in exchange for a subscription. Their annual challenge calls upon aspiring filmmakers to choose from a pre-selected list of tracks that they must include an a video no more than a handful of minutes long. Much like my Writing Battle adventure, I got too big for my britches and decided to enter.

The Story’s Evolution

I keep a note entry on my phone with story ideas, and I’ll admit that they’re all pretty dark. I blame that on my eight year-old self finding my dad’s copy of The Bachman Books in our basement and falling in love with Rage, The Long Walk, and Roadwork. I read through those only a few months after reading my first chapter book–The Boxcar Children–like a twisted little literary hooligan. I may not have understood them fully (and thankfully), but King’s writing was undeniably appealing.

One of my entries was exploring the idea of a family staggering into their dark home from a stormy night. They’re cold and wet and tired. They wander around their house and mumble to themselves why things feel oddly unfamiliar. After goldilocks-ing their way around the house, they meet up again in the living room. I can see them in my mind: formally dressed and drenched to the bone, regarding each other in the darkness with a haze of confusion that is never expressed on their slackened faces. They sit on the couch together and, with very few words exchanged, come to the conclusion that they’re tired and they need to sleep.

So they get up and leave the house. They walk down the street to the cemetery, and take their respective places back in their graves. I imagined the new homeowners waking up the next day to find wet, muddy tracks around the house, as well as a ruined couch sitting adjacent to their wide-open front door.

I wanted to make that story into a video, but I had to approach it from a practicality point of view. Sure, the whole family could dress up and hose ourselves until we’re soaked, but the logistics of it didn’t make as much sense as just hosing off ONE person…ideally a person that was not me.

So, Astraphobia was born; I wondered what would happen if a family lost a child.

A child that was so afraid of thunderstorms that she leaves her grave to return home to get her favorite teddy bear.

A child that realizes that she cannot stay so says her final goodbyes to her family, collects her bear, and bravely returns to her grave where she knows that she belongs, armed with her teddy.

Kimberly still can’t watch it without tearing up.

Making a Movie

Making a movie that’s less than four minutes long is hard, especially when the only formal training anyone has is simply enjoying movies. We did it, though.

Of course we didn’t win, but we learned a lot. We scripted, we shot out of order, we set up ladders and lighting and drove the nieghbors nuts with strobes. We put contacts in Charlee’s eyes and made her run in the street barefoot while her older sister made rain with the garden hose.

I dug a grave and made a headstone and watered that greasy little plant growing in the back of my mind.