I had wanted to see this movie since it came out and I have just gotten around to watching it now. A part of me didn't want to see it because it hits a little too close to home. Another part of me wanted to see it just to see how they portrayed grief after losing a child. I'm glad to say that I thought it was very well done. The film is about a couple who has lost their four-year old son eight months ago. It's not the same as losing a baby, but it's still losing a child, so the grief seemed very similar to me. I could relate to it all.
I'm only going to share a few quotes from the movie that I thought were significant. One was about grief. Nicole Kidman's character, Becca asked her Mom (who had also lost a son) if the grief ever went away.
Becca: Does it ever go away?
Nat: No, I don't think it does. Not for me, it hasn't - has gone on for eleven years. But it changes though.
Becca: How?
Nat: I don't know... the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and... carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is. Oh right, that. Which could be awful - not all the time. It's kinda...
[deep breath]
Nat: not that you'd like it exactly, but it's what you've got instead of your son. So, you carry it around. And uh... it doesn't go away. Which is...
Becca: Which is what?
Nat: Fine, actually.
This is so true. The months after losing Alexandra, the grief was there every day and it seemed to be like a heavy weight on my shoulders that I carried around with me. It was always bearing down on me. Everywhere I went, there were reminders of what I had lost and I noticed every single one. Eventually though, it got lighter. I'm not saying I forgot about it like her mother told her in this scene. I just didn't seem to notice it as much. Like she said, the grief became "bearable" and I felt like I could crawl out from under it and deal with it a little easier than before. I guess you could say, the grief isn't as fresh as it was say, last year at this time. But it's still there. I still remember. I still carry it with me. I still see those reminders of her every single day. The hole in my heart is still there. And that's all fine because the grief I have for Alexandra is there because of the love I have for the baby that I lost. And like Nat said, that's "fine, actually". What would be "fine" would be if Alexandra was still here with me and I never had to have the grief in the first place...but if she can't be here with me, I guess carrying around grief for HER is better than not having anything at all.
They also touch on the subject of a parallel universe. I think I wrote about that in this blog somewhere last year. I like to think that somewhere out there, there's a happier version of me that has Alexandra. Becca says in the movie, when talking about parallel universes, "Well that's a nice thought. That somewhere out there I'm having a good time." Somewhere out there, I'd like to believe that there's a world where babies don't die. Families don't grieve for babies that they never knew and the term babyloss mother never existed and that we all have our babies with us.
There were a few other scenes that I could definitely relate to, but I won't get into them here. All I can say is, see the movie if you haven't. I thought for some reason I was going to be disappointed in it, but I wasn't for the most part. I didn't agree with everything. For example, in the movie, Becca felt like she had to erase everything about her son. She gave his clothes away. She took pictures down from the refrigerator. I still have all of Alexandra's clothes that she had packed away into boxes up in our attic and despite her never coming home, there are reminders of her everywhere in our house, so I see a little bit of her every day. I need to hold onto her as much as I can, because like when she first died, I was afraid I was going to forget her, which is one of the big reasons I have this blog. I need to remember her. And I do... every day.
I wrote about this movie when I watched it back in April. I too liked the exact scene you wrote about. I think I even described my grief this way last summer a few months after Aidan died. Like I was carrying around a large back pack of grief and sadness sometimes and other times my grief was smaller, more purse sized. I could carry it without feeling like it was crushing me. I like how that imagrey fits with the 'brick in your purse'. It's what you carry because you don't have your child. It's size and weight may change over time, but it's always there.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing about this; I will check it out for sure. xo
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this, I really want to see it!
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