Awhile ago my husband and I watched the movie Rabbit Hole. Actually, I was planning on watching it alone one Saturday when my husband had to work, so I could cry as much as I wanted. But his job got cancelled and he came home right when I was starting it. It is about child loss. It is sad, of course.
It ended up being good to watch together, as the plot really focuses on the different way the husband and the wife grieve their loss. The couple's 4 year old son died and at one point my husband said something like "see, it would be so much harder to have to deal with that, after you've had so many memories and you have their room and all their stuff." I know it has to be really different and heartbreaking to lose a living child, but I told him that our loss was as real as theirs was too. It made me really sad to think that he might not consider Kayla as real as a living child. Because it our our responsibility to keep her memory alive. Or not her memory, maybe, because she didn't live in this world. So we have to keep her spirit with us. How do we do that?
I think we are doing it. We are muddling through this confusing first year of grief, and I guess we're doing a good job because we're still standing. And we're still together. Whatever grace or humbleness I thought our marriage had before Kayla died is nothing compared to the daily concessions we have to make in order to stay close to each other, for our marriage to stay intact. Even when we don't realize it, in the hundreds of small decisions and conversations we have each day, we are processing our grief and giving each other grace and forgiveness. When I am charging forward with my grief and my husband is shrinking away, we have to just let it be. We have to give each other that space and that trust that each of us is honoring her spirit in the best way we know how. And that is really hard to do sometimes.
Back to my point about the movie though. At the end the wife asks the husband "What do we do now?" And he responds with all the normal, everyday things they are going to do that day, that have somehow turned grand and heroic in their loss. That's kind of how I've been feeling lately, that What do we do now?
Has anyone else seen the movie?
I saw it a while back. I thought they did a good job of not making them "all better" in the end. Most hollywood stuff must have a happy ending, but we know there is no happy ending to losing a child. It made me laugh when you said you had gotten to watch by yourself so you could cry all you want...that's exactly what I did...now I wish I would have let Brian watch it too. Glad you two were able to watch it together. Brian feels like it would have been even harder losing Addison if she had lived outside of me, but I don't feel like that at all. It's all hard and it all sucks.
ReplyDeleteI almost grabbed it at my MISS meeting last Thursday. I am just not sure I am ready to cry that hard and tear off the band-aid from my oosing wound. Yuck, sorry for that gross description. Anyways, I want to see it and I am leary at the same time. However, I agree with you. I think a loss is a loss. And Kayla did live on this earth, she lived for nine months inside you. She went everywhere with you. She experience every new food that you tried. She heard ever sound that you heard. She knows Daddy's voice from Mommy's voice. She was a part of this world, she just never had to see it. A blind person is as much a part of our world as someone who can see. Everyone experiences the world in a different way.
ReplyDeleteI am always thinking about you Rachel. I send you my thoughts and love.
xo