DEVOTION to FAMILY A person is more closely related to his siblings that he is to any other person on Earth – even his parents. David's stubborn, loving devotion to his siblings is the central theme of this film. Nothing legal binds him to Jon and Emily; nothing dictates that he must assume all parental responsibilities. Despite this, he puts his life on hold to make sure his brother and sister are going to be okay. He tries as hard as he knows how to get Jon through his misery, and he is willing to threaten another man with a baseball bat in order to save Emaily. David's love is what keeps his family together.   ENDURANCE of SPIRIT Time only moves in one direction. The only two options when tragedy strikes are losing oneself in despair or moving forward. David has to keep fighting – he realizes he has no choice. Somewhere inside of him he finds the resolve to both deal with his pain and get his brother and sister through their own crises. He doesn't do anything overtly extraordinary. He simply keeps going.   The PSYCHOLOGY of COPING There is more than one way to deal with death. When tragedy strikes the Jennings family, it does so uniformly, without any regard to the individual. Each of the three siblings loses a mother and a father; each of the three siblings is left on the brink of adulthood without any guidance or support. The ways that David, Jon and Emily deal with this tragedy, however, could not be more different. This film examines how a child might react to the death of his or her parents, from listlessness to self-destruction to just getting by.