The Lingering

Four years ago, Phonso Oliveira was killed when he came home during a robbery. The perpetrators were found and submitted to justice, but his father Antonio Oliveira was overcome with guilt as well as grief. They had an argument and he blames himself for his son's death. He is stuck inside the grief, and worse, he has dedicated his life toward trying to help other grieving families who have suffered the untimely deaths of their children through violent crime, to find their way forward. He has basically been recycling his pain and has lost his marriage to his lovely wife Branca, and his relationships with his living children, Tonio, Jr. and Andrea have also been strained.

After Tonio asks if his father could see fit to part with some of Phonso's boxing equipment (for his nephew through gay marriage who's taken up the sport), Antonio takes grave offense. He kicks his son out in his rage, and then his grief goes into freefall. He's playing some of Phonso's old CD's from 2011, when the ghost of Phonso reappears. After a joyful reunion, Antonio begins to remember just who his son was, how willful and sometimes insensitive he could be. The boy was very different from Tonio who was much closer in temperament to Antonio. The relationship doesn't take long to revert to some of the dynamics between a father and a son who thinks he knows more than his dad. And as this takes place, Antonio starts to wake up to the reality around him, that he's kept himself in the past, that his living relationships are suffering, that he still loves his wife and she loves him. He starts to rebuild those relationships and engages with Tonio's husband's extended family, becoming a de facto grandpa in the process.

Antonio loves his son who's gone, no question. But the boy returns to push him back towards the people who still live and breathe and to release his son back into the land of the beyond.