Synopsis


Retirement, after a lifetime of working, can be a turbulent experience in all facets of life – personal, social, familial and for a person’s health.

A few weeks after retirement, wrapped in a blanket of loneliness, my mother Hannah (64) lays in the living room, her new center of her world.
Television closed, a heavy silence in the air, pictures of small grandchildren all around her and an open panoramic window that looks out to the Mediterranean Sea. At the far left of this picturesque view emerges a worn-down and colorless building – the “Carmel Hospital” with an overpowering visage that disturbs the peace. No one comes, and barely anyone calls.

While my father Tovia (67) unsuccessfully tries to juggle between his wife and his Managerial job which is 100 kilometers away from home.
My 2 brothers, with kids and a family of their own to care, are quietly building their lives far away from all of this, while I find myself 
left alone with a beautiful, tired and
aching motherThe once strong mother that I grew up with, is going over her fantasy retirement wish list - her heart desiring to conquer the world, her aching body refusing to cooperate.

After dozens of medical tests in search of the cause of her pain, my mother is told that she has Fibromyalgia.

And so my mother, a retired teaching administrator, with a lifetime of achievements behind her, who is loved and accepted by her family and friends, finds herself facing a strange disease with poor public relations and little hope with medicinal treatment. Blaming her retirement for this disease, she regrets ever retiring, and feels that she is slowly losing control over her life.

My father, a Road Engineer that lives and breathes his work, is also facing retirement age, a fact he would rather repress and not think about due to his deep fear that he will lose his place and identity as an active and productive part of society, and instead will “fade away” along with my mother. Life besides his sick wife is both challenging and dramatic. He can’t understand what his wife is going through, while fearing the day he finds himself fading away and growing old together with his sick wife. While my mother, impatiently waits and wishes for the day her husband will finally be able to stay by her side, and give her the sense of security she has been so sorely lacking.

The delicate strings that comprise the relationship in my family are exposed in this transition period towards an unfamiliar life for us all.

In dire straits, mom understands that to heal the shaken relationship she must find a cure for her disease. A cure that would rehabilitate her body and maybe, most importantly, save the family and her declining marriage.