February 2nd / November 5th

Feb 02, 2024

Today is February 2nd, Groundhog Day, namesake holiday of the classic film in which Bill Murray relives a single day repeatedly until he learns to be a halfway decent person. 2016 through 2020 felt a bit like Groundhog Day for myself, and I imagine many others, as days of batshit news cycles began to blur together and it seemed nothing could ever cause this vicious cycle to stop until 2020 turned into 2021 and Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump. Then 2021 became 2022, and 2023, and now 2024.

But really, this is not going to be an essay about that, or even an essay about Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day, genuinely the best holiday movie ever made, with the possible exception of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Both films are not just holiday tie-ins but meditations on the nature of holidays and celebrations in and of themselves. Nightmare even draws on similar themes as Groundhog Day, namely the nature of repetition in the holiday cycle in which Jack Skellington is trapped in Halloween the way Phil Connors is trapped in Groundhog Day.

But I said this wasn’t going to be about that. This piece is about John Hughes. Not the legendary Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles director John Hughes: this is about my cousin, John Hughes, who died in 2020 and whose death both jarred me out of a 2020 stupor and caused my life to feel as though it had caved in around me.

I bring up my cousin’s famous name-twin because when I was younger I used to have a very loose understanding of the fact that the two were different people. My adult cousin seemed so big, so important, so powerful that he could have been that name I saw on Christmas Vacation every year. I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten over that connection.

Back in 2020 I had planned on watching V For Vendetta on November 5th and writing up something on it then, or the next day. I think I played Among Us with some friends instead. That night, my cousins last words, as far as I can know, were the Guy Fawkes “remember remember the 5th of November” rhyme, presented to my family in a group text. I woke up to the news of his suicide the next morning.

Clearly something was off that night, but hindsight and all that. My last words to him were unsupportive, but he kind of deserved it that night as he lashed out at the family. His uncharacteristic mean-spiritedness should have been the ultimate red flag that something was wrong. He scarcely had a mean bone in his body, even for those who might have deserved it.

And so now every November 5th sort of plays out the same. I contemplate what might have been differently, if you could really live a day again. How many chances would I have needed to change the outcome? Could it be changed at all?

There’s a popular Groundhog Day fan theory that Ned Ryerson (the insurance salesman played by Stephen Tobolowsky) is the Devil. Personally I think that Ned is trapped in his own time loop. Just like the rest of us, he won’t get to be the center of attention.

As Phil Connors becomes increasingly despondent over his inability to escape the time loop, he repeatedly tries to commit suicide. It doesn’t get him anywhere. I think of my cousin in those scenes. How many times had he lived November 5th? A person can only live that day so many times. The weight becomes too much, clearly. I have to choose to see it as an exit, a peace against the endless repetition, or else it becomes too much to bear myself.

And yes, 2024 is headed to yet another form of repetition: a political rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. My cousin didn’t quite live to see Joe Biden sworn in. I blame his death in part on the madness of the U.S. political landscape under Trump. That kind of stuff weighed on him.

Really, every day is sort of the previous one, isn’t it? At least it feels that way, painfully that way, until it doesn’t: painfully, losing something you thought would always be there. Then somehow you’re still stuck, painfully, and you wonder what it’s like on February 3rd. But it’s always February 2nd. Groundhog Day. A shadow. Six more weeks of winter.

I feel like I write this essay every year, at least parts of it, versions of it. I hope publishing it will help me let it go and move on. But then I imagine myself back here again, a year from now. Phil Connors escapes Groundhog Day; all we can do is try, and hope we wake up on February 3rd.

February 2nd / November 5th

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