Lost Item: Reward Offered

I've lost something (other than my mind) recently, and I was wondering if you guys had seen it, or had an idea of where I put it, because it's something pretty big...and I'm kind of shocked at how it got away from me. What I'm looking for is the month of November. I remember October, and now it's suddenly December. What?!?!? Hmmm...seriously, I've definitely misplaced November, and if you could help me find it, I could really use that time. The reward? Well, um...I'm a woman of meager means, but I promise to flash you my nicest, biggest, most thankful, girl-next-door smile! I can also offer pretty good hugs. Or a stream of really bad knock-knock jokes you know already. That's about it. Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

I had a pretty good weekend. The emotionality of last week sort of faded away Saturday morning and things are looking up again. I went to a lovely holiday party Saturday night and had fantastic conversation full of laughter and was shocked to find that it was 1am when I finally found a clock. Good times, indeed. I also got to share a nice afternoon Sunday with Aaron and Megan. Aaron and Megan are always a good time...my favorite thing about our afternoon was that we didn't really need any sort of "activity" to do...we could just sit around and chat. The sign of good, quality folks. Plus the weather was nice, so it was good to get out of the apartment and take a break from watching movies about grief and death.

What's that? Why am I watching movies about grief and death? I'm so glad you asked. I'm taking a bereavement course this fall (I may have mentioned this in a previous post) and my final project is investigating how popular culture represents death and grief in film. The subtext of this project is the idea that you can use film therapeutically to help children talk about their own grief...while they may have a hard time articulating their thoughts about their own feelings, they can easily talk about a movie character, and then transition. In any case, I wanted to pick three films that represented different kinds or different sides of grief. Thus far, I have chosen "Moonlight Mile" to represent how families and groups of people relate during death; and I have chosen "My Life" to tell the story of dealing with your own death. Both of these stories focus on adults dealing with death, and so for my third story I wanted to select something with children dealing with death...but there's not a lot out there. M. Night Shyamalan, whose movies I have thoroughly enjoyed thus far, made a movie in 1998 about a boy who goes searching for God after his grandfather dies to make sure his grandfather is OK. However, it was evidently fairly unsuccessful and so is pretty hard to find here in Boston. I think, instead, I'm going to pick "Courage Under Fire," and abandon the idea of children in film alltogether, opting for post-traumatic stress disorder instead. PTSD is still relevant, good for using with teens who have been in a severe car accident and lost a loved one in the experience.

Here is my issue, and why I brought all of this up: Why aren't there many movies showing an honest portrayal of grief? I don't mind if you tie it up with a nice ribbon in the end and give a sense of moving forward...I tend to be a "every cloud has a silver lining" kind of girl anyway, and I also think that there comes a point in everyone's grief process where you finally wake up, and that day is better than the last, simply because it's not yesterday. And you have a few of those in a row, and suddenly you've had a week of them, and while it might not be all roses and rainbows, you can get to a point where you look back at the grieving process and realize that you may not ever be done mourning, but you're in a much better place than you used to be...and to me that's the nice ribbon wrapped around the process. So it's alright that Hollywood puts a happy face on at the end...but there really aren't a lot of movies that show true grief: where it's not easy, and there are moments of laughter mixed in with the sadness at really socially-deemed inappropriate moments, and the guilt that follows those instances, and things like that. How it's really confusing and difficult, and just when you think you're done, something strangely small brings back all the pain as if it were new and fresh all over again. Sure, some people grieve in the stages we're all familiar with: the classic Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance movement, but many of us don't do those stages in that order, or even do all of them at all. The best movie I've seen recently representing adult grief was "In the Bedroom." It's not something I would use with children, and there comes a moment in the movie where I feel the people in the movie start to act on thier grief in inappropriate ways, but what really overwhelmed me about the movie was that there was almost no background music. The silence in the fights and between the dialogue was eerie, and it made me really uncomfortable...which was what I thought was so brilliant about the movie. The thing is: grief is uncomfortable. It's not easy, and people who are grieving and even those around them are uncomfortable. And this movie really got that point across. In any case, for all you young filmmakers out there, you can use this idea. Represent grief more realisitically. You can wrap it up nicely in the end if you want, but be original. End rant.

In other news, it snowed here in New England today. Not much, just enough to dust everything and make it all pretty. It didn't even stick to the roads...just perfect! I ran around for about 5 minutes catching big snowflakes on my tongue this evening before class. Of course, it prompted me to finally admit it is the holiday season and tonight I am busting out the collection of holiday CDs. I also hear that BNL has a new holiday album, complete with three Hanukkah songs and other such lovely things. If anyone has heard the album, let me know your thoughts. I love BNL...so I'm pretty sure I'll love the album.

And that, my friends, is all she wrote.

music: "Remember Who I Am" (album) by Girlyman...the band that opened for the Indigo Girls the last time I saw them...their sound is incredible...awesome harmony and great acoustic music. I highly recommend them.