Grief...

Today I had a wonderful day. I got to spend the whole day with my boys, both of whom were in marvelous moods. A trip to Half-Price books, dinner at Logan's Roadhouse, and a good movie... can't get much better than that.

However, the movie really got me thinking. We went and watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a movie that is about a young boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Towers on 9-11. It was rated PG-13, and I was a little leery to let Caleb watch it, but he sat there riveted for most of the 2 hours +. He's watched footage of 9-11 because I think it is important that we never forget.

In this film, the young boy is obviously working through the grieving process. As a nation, we mourned our society as a whole... but those people in those towers were PEOPLE. They had spouses, moms, dads, kids.. friends and family who couldn't just watch the morbid news broadcasts over and over. I was one of those fixated. I still can't watch coverage of the towers collapsing without having my heart in my chest, and I can't imagine what it was like in NYC that day. The smells, the sounds, the fear and anguish. As a nation, we mourned the loss of our innocence, of our immortality, of our invincibility. We still mourn. Proof was seen tonight, in that movie theatre, where I sat sniffling while Wallace slept beside me (ok, maybe he wasn't quite as riveted by the whole storyline as I was) and while Caleb squeezed my hand and told me, "If you don't quit embarrasing me by crying at movies I'm going to stop coming with you." (Because I do... cry at movies. All kinds of movies).

But as I sat there sniffling and wiping the tears away, I realized that grief interrupted, or grief brought back to life over and over again, only makes us hurt worse. Unresolved grief is the most difficult type to deal with. And grief takes so many different forms. For some, it is through diversion that they deal... for others, it is by facing it head on and tackling it. We cry, we shout, we hide, we bury ourselves under the covers. But the important thing when we grieve, whether it be for a physical loss or the loss of a family member or grief because something didn't happen the way we wanted to during the day, is to DO SOMETHING. Oscar in the movie did something. It was a difficult road of grief but he acted in it. He did what he had to do to finally face his fears. We'd be wise if we did the same.