Hi everyone! It’s Melinda. Welcome to Melinda’s Grief Corner! MGC comes out twice a month on Sundays. If this is your first time here, be sure to check out past posts to learn more about the inspiration behind this new Article Club feature and read about other grief-y topics I’ve covered with resources I’ve shared!
I live by certain truths: vintage Levi’s 501s are the best jeans, cats are (cuddly!) aliens, and you should always have chocolate chip cookies stored away in case of bad days (or good days too!). In my grief era I have learned another truth I live by: most movies and tv shows are about grief.
I learned this truth before my own grief era began. One of my very best friends, we’ll call them “D” to respect their privacy, lost their mom about a year before my dad died. I wasn’t sure how D would be feeling on their first birthday after their mom’s passing, so I offered to come visit them to keep them company if they felt that would be supportive. No pressure of course! Sometimes folks just want to be solo on big days when grief feels big. I told D we could do whatever they wanted for their birthday - go out to dinner, veg out on the couch, whatever felt best. We share a love of scary movies so D decided we would watch a scary movie and order a cake from their favorite local bakery.
D picked “Happy Death Day.” Now, dear reader, yours truly did not do my due diligence when it came to figuring out the basic plot of this movie. So when D hit play on this movie on their birthday we quickly realized that the main character’s mom had tragically died off screen.
I mean what an epic FAIL on my part. I immediately freaked out and told D we could stop watching it, but they said to me “Melinda, almost every movie has a dead parent. Trust me.” This could not be more true, dear reader!
Since then I have encountered so many movies and tv shows that I quickly learn after the opening credits are about grief and even more specifically have dead parents in them. All that to say, sometimes we grievers just want some grief relief and we’d rather not watch a family have to choose to take their loved one off of life support (I’m looking at you “Steel Magnolias”).
But this newsletter is about a grief movie that I encountered over the holidays last year that I actually think is an excellent film if you are in a place where you want to feel the grief feels via the art of cinema. And that movie is “A Real Pain” starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kiernan Culkin.
I watched this in the theater knowing full well it was a griefy film. I won’t spoil the whole movie, but the basic story line is this: two cousins go on a trip to Poland to visit their late grandmother’s village where she lived before surviving the Holocaust. The loss is still fresh for them both and despite being close in their boyhood, they’ve become very different people who had different relationships with their grandmother and are now grieving in completely different ways.
This film moved me because of how honest it is about how complicated grief can be. And how even when you are grieving alongside someone else who loved the person who is gone, your grief experiences can be like night and day. I felt that way about my mom, who also of course lost my dad too. But our grief could not look more different. And that can be jarring for the grieving who already feel alone and isolated.
This film has some beautiful moments, hilarious dialogue and biting truths about grief and how it affects those who are still living. And how relationships can shift and change for the living after the death of a loved one.
Now, if you are not in the space to watch a grief-y film, I completely understand! Save this newsletter for later. It will be here when/if you are ready.
In the meantime, I’d love to know what grief film or tv show moved you! Drop it in the comments.
Big hugs.
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