We'd been enjoying date night on a rainy evening, dinner in a warm and reasonably priced restaurant with good conversation and laughter.
Dodging raindrops to get to the theater before the previews started, we arrived a little wet but no worse for wear. Settling into our seats, we held hands and comfortably waited for the movie to begin.
The movie turned out to be well told ~ funny, poignant and very realistic. Without giving away too much of the plot, it turned out to share the story of a family grappling with a tragic injury to one of the parents.
Thanks to really pitch-perfect, honest acting by George Clooney and the girls playing his daughters (whose names I don't yet know) I found myself more and more drawn into the storyline.
By the end of the film, I was openly weeping. Hot tears were streaming down my cheeks unchecked, a torrent of emotion welling up from the deeper part of me that remembers all too well what it was like to experience the protracted illness and loss of my father two years ago.
I believe that anyone who has lost a person close to them (parent, spouse, lover, child, sibling) would experience what I did while watching the film... namely, recognition.
I recognized the situation and emotions the actors were portraying, because I have been there. I have felt those things. I have gone through all of it up close.
The rest of what I plan to write includes information relating to the ending of the film, so if you are a person that likes to be surprised by the ending of movies, I want to be clear that there are serious spoilers ahead. SPOILER ALERT. I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of this film, so if you don't want to know what happens please stop reading now.
For those folks still reading, we're back to that moment at the end of the film when my husband and I sat in the dark - still holding hands - but rather than feeling loving or romantic, I was involved in some shoulder-shaking sobbing... trying not to disturb the people around us.
On the big screen, George Clooney's character and his daughters were sitting on a boat in the open water with an urn. In the urn: the ashes of the woman they had all loved (and hated, and admired, and yearned for, and despaired over). Under a bright, sunny sky they then took turns casting her ashes into the clear turquoise water. Her ashes rippled under the surface of the water, cascading gently downward.
I was completely caught off-guard by the scene.
I have been there, in the open water on a sunny day. Casting ashes into the ocean with my family. Watching them spread like angels under the waves.
Suddenly the intensity of that moment in my real life returned, overwhelmed my senses. I cried for my father and for the pain of all children who have lost a parent, all husbands and wives who have lost a spouse. All parents who have lost a child.
My husband, such a good man, held my hand.
He sat with me for a moment, as I wept. But though we were side by side holding hands in the dark, we were also miles and miles apart.
He, who has not yet experienced such an incredibly personal loss, really enjoyed the film - but it didn't affect him emotionally. It was just a movie to him - a great, well-done movie.
He could not relate to the characters. He has never clasped the ashes of a loved one in his hand and discovered for himself that ashes are not fine and powdery but rather grainy and gritty. He has never held the cremated flesh and bones of a parent, once vital but now lost, in his palm and then cast them into the sea.
My husband has a true and beautiful heart. He is not an emotional guy but he feels things strongly just like the rest of us and he has vast, deep love for his family. He adores his parents, siblings, children, me; his close friends. He may not wear his heart on his sleeve, but he would do anything for the people he loves and he shows love in the way he lives his life daily.
He is so genuine that I half-thought he would understand; that he'd cry with me.
He didn't.
Two years ago when Dad died I expected my husband to know exactly what to say, what to do... how I felt. What I needed. What I didn't need... somehow by osmosis - just because he lived with me and saw me every day. Naively and unrealistically, I assumed that he could feel what it was like to live in my skin, sense the weight of my grief.
When it turned out that he wasn't in the same emotional place that I was in... when my father's death was more like a movie to him than a personal devastation... I responded with anger, frustration, disbelief.
It took a while for me to work through my own loss and realize that no matter how close we are to others - they can't bear our pains or wounds for us. They can't walk through our valleys of shadow.
What I've learned during the two years since the death of my father is this:
You can't be angry with someone or feel let down by them for not sharing the twisting, searing pain of your private grief. For not matching your pain... tear for tear, or empathizing with your tragedy.
Even when we are in love, even when we are best friends, even when we are a family - there are still many roads that must be walked down alone.
Experiencing the death and loss of a close friend or family member turns out to be a lot like so many pivotal life experiences (falling in love, having sex, becoming a parent, being hospitalized, facing a serious illness or undergoing surgery)...
You just can't explain in words to someone who has never been through those things what they actually feel like. Loss is one more thing a person can only really understand if they have experienced it.
* * *
I wept tonight at the end of the movie, spontaneously and from the heart. It was a lonely, broken feeling ~ and for a short time those emotions from two years ago swept back over me.
My husband patted me awkwardly and kindly, and then shepherded me back to our car. We drove home in total silence, just the sound of rain pouring down on our windshield. For twenty minutes we did not exchange a word.
Two years ago, I would probably have responded with disappointment to his silence. I might have felt hurt or frustrated that he didn't want to wade with me into the depths of mourning. That he had nothing to say.
Tonight, I reflected quietly on the fact that there was no possible way he could understand what I was feeling at that moment - because (thankfully) he has not ever had to hold the cremated remains of a loved one in his hand and feel that last connection to their once-warm body ebbing away from him.
I realized that my pain is something I don't want him to have to share, to feel. I would never wish it upon him (or anyone). I'm so truly glad he still has both of his parents, all of our children, me. I hope he never learns that kind of aching.
As we drove home to our beautiful, sleeping, breathing family - I thanked him in my heart for holding space for me. For giving me the mental and emotional room in which to grieve and cry, without trying to interject his own ideas about my loss. Without pretending that he knew what it felt like.
I thanked him for being alive. For being here. For loving me.
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