Heartbreak and The Descendants. . .

Mr. and I watched The Descendants last weekend.  In many ways, it was kind of what we expected - very much an Alexander Payne movie.  We love Payne, and as a couple of Omaha kids, we like to see what that guy who made all of those movies about Omaha is up to because his films are among my favorites. To be fair to him and to his movie - it's good.  The script is solid, the acting is awesome, and Payne's ability to utilize the environment-as-another-character shines through.

For me, though, the whole of the movie brought back two snapshot moments of my life with such force they broke my heart all over again.  In the first, I am sixteen and it is October and I am having dinner with my father and stepmother in Franklin, NE and he is describing my grandmother's casket because we know she's going to die but she hasn't died and suddenly the whole place smells like corn and mashed potatoes and there are so many goddamned people walking and talking and LIVING that I want to scream at them.  I want a record scratch moment that stops the world and a world that stops and says I'm sorry.  But none of that happens.  We at the table don't even really stop chewing.  We're just eating dinner with the sure knowledge that grandma will be gone in days or weeks and life will plod on.

And in the second, I am sitting on a roll-away bed in my stepfather's NICU room.  And it's almost October. It is late at night and tomorrow he will die, but right now I'm wearing one ear-bud of my iPod.  My younger sister has the other and I'm trying to find "At the Bottom of Everything" by Bright Eyes and we are sitting in the dark listening to beautiful music and we are as close as the earbuds require of us but we are not hugging or crying because we're done hugging and crying for the moment we are just sitting and being one with music because for a moment we need to not be aware that we are waiting for someone to die.

I spent the whole of my viewing of The Descendants in those two memories - gripped by how it feels to be stopped in time while the world moves on around you with and without you and definitely without your loved one.  I don't know if Payne's that good or if I was just that emotional or if I possibly need therapy but it was exhausting and lovely and heart breaking and amazing all at once.

Just like those times were.  Just like those memories are.