Starring and written by John Cusack, the film Grace is Gone focuses on a father of two who learns that his beloved soldier-wife has died during action in Iraq, and how he attempts to deal with his own grief as well as relate the loss to his daughters who are trying to cope while their mother is away and fighting for their freedom. The film also features the musical score of the infamous Clint Eastwood, performed by the Dave Matthews Band.
It is not commonplace for the media to relate the experience of a female member of a family going to war, and a male member staying home to take care of the children. But it is very much a reality of many families who's members are called to serve for their nation, and having to leave your home to fight and kill others is almost as scary as having to continue daily living as though your significant other was not off serving in a foreign land, never truly knowing if they were alive or dead in that moment.
This was the reality of Stanley Phillips whose wife, Grace was currently enlisted in the army and was at that moment serving in Iraq. Stanley and Grace had had two daughters, the first being Heidi and the second being Dawn. Both daughters have very stark differences in their personality and deal with not having their mother around them differently. Heidi is an individual that is portrayed as someone well beyond her 12 years, of life she is smart, responsible, and yet sombre. Afraid to be happy or to let herself be the child that she is. And then there is Dawn, this 8 year old bouncing ball of curly hair is still young enough to feign naïvety and cling onto the hope that her mother will soon return and that her family will be normal once again.
On a day like any other, Stanley gets the news that his beloved spouse was killed in action, but instead of falling into grief and mourning for his wife, he decides to take a road trip with himself and his daughters to Enchanted Gardens which is an amusement park a few days drive away from where they stay. And though their journey, Stanley is trying to deal with the new information of having lost the love of his life and breaking the news to his daughters who are still desperately trying to life a normal life.
Kubler-Ross's Stages of Grief
In the amended model for grief, Kubler-Ross (1972) and his associates had amended the theory of grief from having five stages to now including seven. These stages of grief help in understanding what emotions and thought processes are occurring within an individual who has just experienced the loss of a loved one. The new stages of grief include shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance. Although not every individual faces each stage chronologically or is at each stage for the same amount of time, the individual facing the loss is predicted to experience all seven stages before being able to move past the crippling pain of losing someone they loved.
Stanley was very much functioning in the emotion of denial for most of the film, he tried his utmost best to pretend that he didn't in fact lose his wife, and that if he just displaced the feelings that he was having into making sure that his daughters were happy and got everything they wanted, then maybe the pain of loss would simply go away. This was not the case however, as more than a few times we see Stanley break down his own illusion of normalcy and experience anger and sadness over his loss as the illusions that a person creates in grief seldom carry forward or have any sense of logic. (Kugler-Ross, Wessler and Avioli, 1972)
Filter Model
Broadbent's (1958) filter model on how an individual has selective attention and processes information at different rates, explains that all stimuli that is presented to a person goes though a sensory buffer which works in the same manner that a bottle neck does. It restricts the incoming information to be processed so that vital information is stored and that we do not go into cognitive overload though having excessive exposure to a stimuli.
Grief in itself can be considered a major stressor to an individual, and despite the manner in which the person was lost to you, the very fact that you once had an attachment with the deceased means that not only is a person going to experience some form of grief, but also needs to employ certain measures in order to be able to process the very abstract notion of loss.
Stanley was very much unable to process the information that his wife had passed on, and he resorted to behaviours that would be considered very much outside the realm of normal behaviours exhibited by the loss of a loved one. He would be calling his own phone at home just so he could hear his wife's voice on the answering machine, try to enforce the same rules on his daughters that his wife had imposed; such as only being able to pierce their ears at the age of thirteen, and attempting to reclaim some of the happiness that he felt the last time he was in Enchanted Gardens with his whole family before his wife was shipped away. He did this so that he would be able to deal with the overwhelming stimuli of death of his wife, in a way displacing his feelings so that he would be able to deal with it a little at a time and not break apart entirely and fall into depression.
Truth be told, I would have rather not watched this film at all, or rather not in a public setting. The reason being that I had encountered the loss of someone that I loved not that long ago now, and watching this film had brought afresh memories that I would have rather kept buried. The film itself resonated very strongly with me in that I saw the character Heidi as myself in many portions of the movie. She tried to be strong and adopted a more matured outlook on life due to the circumstances she was placed in, keeping her own emotions at bay and trying her best to do what is expected of her despite being in unfavourable circumstances. She never once used her situation to justify her behaviour, believing herself to be more than the product of her circumstances, even at the cost of her own childhood wonder.
Finding acceptance in grief, although the ultimate goal, is not one that is easily achieved. And although it is said that time heals all wounds, how much time is still very much a question that I have yet to find an answer for. But as Heidi found comfort in the mutual grief of her family, so did I in the close family and friends that I had around me during my time of loss. While the losing of someone that you cared deeply for is a pain that I would never wish on another human being, having people that empathise and understand you when you can barely understand yourself is something that I believe is the key to finding acceptance and resilience after losing someone you loved.
References:
Broadbent, D. (1958). Perception and Communication. London: Pergamon Press.
Kübler-Ross, E., Wessler, S., & Avioli, L. V. (1972). On death and dying. Jama, 221(2), 174-179.
No comments:
Post a Comment