I saw the movie The Descendants on New Year’s Eve, on the recommendation of a good friend of mine. She said the cinematography was beautiful (and it was) and George Clooney was in it…that sold me. ☺ Nothing like a movie set in Hawaii on a winter’s afternoon in Winterpeg!
It was a fitting movie for a therapist to see to round out the year. One of the first scenes of the movie had Matt King, a too-busy-for-family lawyer working at his wife’s hospital bedside. She has severe head trauma and is in a coma, and he says something to his wife the effect of:
“Elizabeth, if you did this as a wake up call to get me to be a better husband, to change my ways to be there for you in a way you asked but I wasn’t….consider me woken up. I promise to change my ways and be the husband I want to be…now wake up, Elizabeth”.
He finds out shortly after that the brain damage is too extensive and her health care directive is such that the machines will be removed from her body and she will be allowed to die.
He’s clueless to parent his 2 daughters…he’s the “back up parent” who does little hands on parenting…and now he is thrust into the role of primary/only parent. In his stumbling efforts to figure out how to relate to his daughters, his 17 year old lets him know that Elizabeth was having an affair.
It was too late. He had already lost her before she was injured. It’s a sucker punch that the grieving man has a hard time wrapping his head around.
I say it’s suitable for a therapist to watch because it bookended so much of my experience of being with clients:
Matt’s grieving the loss of relationship with his wife on multiple levels. He grieves his part in the destruction of the relationship. He’s furious with her over how she allowed it to deteriorate. He loves her, and he grieves her death. He misses her and wants her back…and realizes how he took her for granted in a way that is full of regret.
I watch people grieve the end of relationships…some through death, but often from neglect or fear or confusion. It’s not easy to watch as people do the “shoulda/coulda/woulda” thing.
Sometimes couples come in…one is completely “done”, and comes out of some sense of obligation…and the other finally “gets it” that their partner is unhappy, and is ready to do the work…but it goes nowhere, because it’s already over.
Sometimes it is a parent grieving disconnection with a child, or a person grieving the pain experienced in their home as a child.
Sometimes people are grieving the end of a certain type of relationship they have with themselves…through life circumstances and inner turmoil, they question who they are, what they really want, or how to move on given that things don’t seem to be what they were.
As human beings, we are hard wired to be very close to a precious few in our lives…and when those connections are damaged, fractured, broken or misused…it’s painful.
Update in 2019: This pattern was so discouraging to me, I wrote a book about it to try to break the pattern before the marriage itself gets broken:
Like Matt, people are prone to introspection, self-examination, anger, and all manner of processing as the breaking-of-relationship is wrestled with.
Matt recognizes how disconnected he’s been…and he’s now a single parent. He makes some mistakes, but he bumbles about trying to figure out how to support his two children who are distraught and acting out.
He doesn’t know them, but he starts to want to.
He begins to reconnect, and over time, through the clumsy-and-bumpy-working-out of this painful situation, the father and his kids become a meaningful family to each other. He softens towards them, and as a result, they soften towards him. They support each other, laugh together, and simple and comfortably end the movie by silently hanging out with each other, even as they grieve the death of Elizabeth
The other part of my job is watching the reconnecting of families or, in some cases, the connecting for the first time. People discover closeness and intimacy.
They take risks, fumbling courageously forward to find ways of knowing and being known by the other. This is painful dangerous-to-the-soul stuff…can take a while to decide if/how to move forward…but gradually, they move forward.
Couples re-discover the love they had for each other.
A person heals and ventures forth into new relationships with fear and vulnerable authenticity.
A letter is written to an estranged family member with no known outcome…the letter itself a sign of growth, and the trip the envelope takes gives possibilities of further connection.
This is the stuff of courage as people dare to draw near to another. The privilege of watching people connect deeply with others is something I don’t think I could ever grow tired of.
2012 starts a new year…a fresh page of beginnings…there will be disappointments and loss for many in this year. Loss that will simply need to be grieved…and loss that can motivate and inspire to move forward differently.
There will also be a recognition by some of their role in the patterns that create distance and distress in relationships…and for some if these, this will be accompanied by a desire to address one’s responsibility in that destructive pattern.
Reading, conversations, journaling, thinking, pondering, praying, relating, maybe even therapy will be tools that these folk will use to recognize where it is not too late to draw near to others.
There will also be many opportunities to celebrate the relationships that are close and intimate and fun and life-giving. Enjoy those moments.
Do what you can, while you can, to have your relationships match on the outside how you feel about the person on your inside. Do it now, while you can.
Blessings to you in 2012.
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