Suzanne Harrington: Three months after my dad died, the little donkey in The Banshees of Inisherin has me undone

"Rivers leak from my eyes in the plush darkness. That little donkey. Even typing the words now are making my eyes fill up again. What a film."

Three months ago when my dad died, all I felt was relief. Great waves of it, that he was no longer living in a dying body, where the very act of being alive was killing him. To watch someone suffering is unbearable, especially when there is no magic pill for dying slowly from old age. So when he died, all I felt was relief that he was free of his body. I exhaled. We all did.

Three months later, at the cinema, the little donkey in The Banshees of Inisherin has me undone. Rivers leak from my eyes in the plush darkness. That little donkey. Even typing the words now are making my eyes fill up again. What a film. Forget the soured severance between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson – it’s the love between Farrell and his animals that reduces me to rubble. The straightforward, uncomplicated love.

Then it happens again at yoga, doing a back bend that opens the chest to the sky (as they say in yoga, because ‘aertex ceiling’ doesn’t sound quite the same); my eyes are pouring water all over my mat in the crowded studio. WTF. It’s your heart chakra opening, says my teacher afterwards. I feel a bit mental.

I put it down to coming off Prozac. I’ve been weaning myself off for ages, having been taking a minimum dose for years purely out of habit. That must be it – I’m feeling my feelings because there is no longer anything neurologically flattening them out (or whatever the medical term is). Like a mollusc without a shell, there is no longer a buffer.

It's not like I saw much of my dad. We lived in different countries since 1987. We talked on the phone instead, until talking on the phone took too much energy for him; then we’d have brief catch-ups, sometimes just a minute or two. Some days he’d have more energy, and would try to convince me of the existence of heaven and hell, and I’d steer the conversation to something that really did exist, like football. (In his later years he seemed to forget our unwritten pact that I wouldn’t preach animal rights if he didn’t preach Catholicism).

At least football was neutral, and even though he was a diehard rugby fan, we could chat about Ronaldo or how Brighton – my team – were doing in the league. (He knew more about football than I will ever do about rugby). This week I realised I desperately wanted to talk to him about interest rates, just to hear him say that everything would be ok, and not to worry.

I mention the crying at the little donkey in a film and crying involuntarily at yoga to a friend whose own eighty-something dad died a year ago. Must be the Prozac, I tell her, even though I was only on a tiny dose. She looks at me as though I am a bit simple. It’s grief, you doughnut, she says. What you’re feeling is standard, three-months-later, post-relief grief. Just feel it.