I have touched on the complexities of grief issues before, but the movie "Rachel Getting Married" shows it so well.
For those of you who have not seen the movie, I will give a short synopsis. Kym is a twenty plus woman who is leaving her rehab residential care unit to come home for her sister, Rachel's, wedding. There is a lot of tension because everyone is worried about what Kym will do--will she use drugs, will she wreck the car, will she be outrageous?
The wedding is taking place at their father's big house and there is no sign of their mother until she arrives late for the rehearsal dinner and leaves early after the wedding, barely spending any time with her two daughters.
There is drama around who is going to be the brides maid, the fact that Kym lied about an event at a prior rehab place, that her father didn't want her using the family car, etc.
But the real event is the fact that Kym had been high on drugs at age sixteen when she was babysitting her little brother. She lost control of the car when driving over a bridge and the car crashed into the water. Kym couldn't get her little brother out of his car seat and he drowned. We could all see that the father and mother had divorced after the tragedy because they each had remarried.
What I find fascinating is that there is no mention of the real story in any of the plots I read or trailers that I saw. In fact, one writer had accused the mother of being cold and self-centered, when it was so very clear that she was emotionally tortured over what had happened.
When Kym first arrived home, the first thing she did was go to her little brothers room and open the door to look in. It was still left exactly as it was most likely the day he died. Colors were done in blue and there was a stuffed animal on the bed. She looked in and then closed the door.
I'm not judging this. I happen to believe that changing the room and putting things away or giving them away, or allowing guests or another sibling to use the room is all part of the healing process. Some parents want to do this immediately. Others, never deal with the room. Whether this is done immediately or never is not the issue. What's important here is that parents and siblings have someone who they trust to help them walk through the aftermath of their loss.
All through the movie, I could see Kym trying to deal with her own feelings of guilt, denial, and self forgiveness. Clearly her continued drug use after the death was a sign of being unable to cope with what had happened and her profound guilt over it. Much of the complexity was what was happening between her and her mother, her and her sister, the sisters and the father, and the sisters and the mother.
Not only did this family lose their son/brother, but they lost their family. The girls lost their mother. The parents lost their spouses.
At one point Kym confronted her mother about why she had allowed Kym to babysit her brother when she was so clearly high. Her mother told her that Kym was so good with him, but that she wasn't supposed to kill him.
This dramatic scene between Kym and her mother was one of the most honest communications in the movie. Kym and her mother were both grappling with self-blame and blaming the other. There was such hurt and loss between these two characters. Kym was in rehab and trying to sort it out so she could stop her self destructive behavior. After talking to her mother (there was some physical violence also), she got in her car and ran it into a tree, a more direct approach to suicide than the slower way with drugs (by the way, she didn't die and was able to be at Rachels wedding).
You could see the father had been brutally affected by the death of his son, but I got the impression that he also was terrified of losing another child--Kym--because of her drug use. He spent his whole time trying to placate everyone and make peace.
No one was talking about the real issue. Kym was the only one who brought it up with her mother. All the rest was innuendos and skirting the real issue. Like the empty blue room. No one lived in it, but no one talked about why not either.
I would say that the wedding took place anywhere from six to ten years after the tragedy took place and the grief was still pretty intense. I loved this because it was so real. This kind of a loss keeps going. Rachel seems to have found a loving and supportive husband to marry and she is going forward with her life, but even the happy occasion of her wedding brings forth the family tragedy.
There is so much in this movie, I could go on and on, but I want to leave you with my purpose of commenting on this movie with this: Grief work isnot easy. It takes courage and tremendous fortitude. There are issues upon issues. It's not always so cut and dried. Each person deals with it in his/her own way. It can take years (in some cases) to come close to feeling any kind of a peace with it.
And;most of us need help.But we need the kind of help that lifts us up and gives us hope. Kym, in the movie, is starting to face what happened and her part in it. She's reached out for help and is courageously facing it--a bit awkwardly at times, but she's doing it.
As I watched this movie and saw the roles all of the family members were playing, I felt such empathy and sorrow for them. I know it's just a movie, but it's a mirror of real life. I can see whatcouldhappen. There was such love and need for love and so many unspoken words and emotions. I know that most of us have the bottom line truth inside of us and when that can come out, there is much healing that takes place.
As always, don't judge yourself and know that there is much love here for you.
