After Friday’s screening of “Freeheld”, I spoke with Charles Hester, whose sister Laurel was the subject of the short movie. It was the first time he’d seen the flick, filmed during Laurel’s last weeks of life before succumbing to lung cancer a year ago.
He told me that the family originally objected to the film project. After all, the flick does examine (quite intimately) Laurel’s declining health. It shows her losing clumps of hair, and confessing in a low growl to her hospice nurse that she was obsessed with predicting when death would come.
Watching Laurel, a lifelong police detective, deteriorate on screen was not easy for the audience. Knowing that his sister’s suffering would be relived with each screening must have tore Charles’ guts out.
However, Charles said the project — and Laurel’s fight to secure her police pension for her life partner — ultimately gave purpose to her illness. And in his mind, that purpose eased his fear that Laurel’s struggles would be exploited for political gain.
Laurel’s home state of New Jersey legalized civil unions for same-sex partners in February.
Image courtesy of AFI.
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