Some Sweet Day

Some Sweet Day is deeply personal, rooted in the eight-year journey my family and I navigated as we cared for my father following his unexpected illness in 2014. His passing in 2022 was not the beginning of our grief. It had been creeping into our lives long before, manifesting in the quiet ruptures of anticipatory loss. Initially, I set out to explore the weight of living in that liminal space, but after his death, the film’s focus shifted.

The project evolved from Dead Yard, a four-channel video installation inspired by Jamaican mourning traditions, featuring my mother, my father’s brother, and his mother. While that work examined grief as a collective experience, Some Sweet Day distills it into a cinematic meditation on my mother’s journey. She was a grieving wife and, by extension, the mother of a grieving son. I sought to understand how she, like me, faced yet another new normal, processing loss through a storm of emotions, regrets, and unanswered questions.

The film’s production was deliberately intimate. I was the sole crew member, ensuring a space of deep personal reflection. At its core is a candid conversation between my mother and me, set in the guest room of her Florida apartment. This dialogue, interwoven with archival footage and my own interaction with family photos, invites viewers to engage with themes of loss, memory, and the permanence of absence.

Beyond the screen, Some Sweet Day challenges the societal discomfort around death and grief. We rarely confront life’s finality or discuss how to navigate mourning. In the wake of a global pandemic that left so many unprepared for loss, these conversations are more urgent than ever. If this film encourages even one person to engage more consciously with their grief, to seek support, to talk, or to remember, then it has fulfilled its purpose.