I borrowed a video from the library called The Shrink. It featured Kevin Spacey as a Los Angeles psychiatrist with clients involved in show business. He was forever wandering back lost to the suicide of his wife, a grieving process he finally enlightened himself about after much personal suffering. The moral of the story, so to speak, was that you have to pick yourself up and go on when you lose someone. He found himself over and over again lying on the floor, the couch, the lounge chair by the pool, but he didn't realize when he found himself in those places that he was actually finding himself as he had become since his wife had died. He wasn't able to see through his loss to the otherside of his life, where he would begin to live without her.
It begs the question of what was their marriage like, the shrink and his wife.
The movie doesn't elaborate on the married life of the psychiatrist, it only goes into the depth of his despair. He doesn't connect to loving his wife as much as he does the losing of her through death. He cannot cope with the death and so he becomes like her, returning to dust, through the excessive use of mind altering substances which his family feel and attempt an intervention because of, cloud his judgment. He is, however, a realistic man and finds that once he understands what his grief is doing to him, he is able to pick up the pieces and continue his life, initiating contact with a potential girl friend, wearing pajamas to bed instead of falling into it still clothed for the previous day.
The Shrink is an interesting movie because it details what exactly our process is in terms of coping with grief. We have tears, we have an overwhelming feeling of sorrow, but what we cannot face is what we feel about what has happened to us. We try our best to blot it out but it is not until we face the reality of the circumstances: our true love has gone, our child, our parent..whatever the issue, then we are able to adjust to it, make it a part of our life. Until we are able to grasp the terms of the despair we feel...we cannot make any adjustment to it. Who knows how long it takes for an individual to come to this realization. It is as though we wrap ourselves in a great bundle of wool, something that insulates us, coccoons us, holds us in its cloudy web, until we begin to see the faint light of our reason coming to terms with the blow it has been dealt.
Some of us come upon this despair daily. These are the mentally depressed among us. For them the cloudy wool of our existence never truly leaves, but clots all reason with the condition of despair, that we may cling to that and not to the daily routine of our lives. We find we have no reason to have that daily routine. It matters little if the dust on the furniture deepens...we're not obliged to reason with that...it's there...so what... So it was with Spacey's psychiatrist character. He moved onward, you didn't see him frying any bacon...popping up some toast...he merely went forward with a sandwich shoved in his face...He was stopping up the grief with a little analgesic pastrami but it wasn't sizzling in the pan and giving up a wonderful aroma..it was merely there.
It takes a while to come to terms with grief. I prefer to think of grieve as the kidneys metabolizing and processing the eternal waste of the human soul..they've got a job to do, fluids, diuretic inducing foods, it helps somewhat but the main thing to do is to think positive about the daily routine...keep motivated to sweep, launder, dust, tidy, organize...and then contemplate what little thing has been accomplished, see it as the reality of your life. Little by little you can build on these daily accomplishments and see that they add up to a reality that coexists with grief, takes from it only the necessary, adjusts to the positive outcome. It takes a while, it becomes a matter of thought then, and the mind, the human mind, accepts that there is still a soul within the body, that the soul does not truly wish to join the great unknown just yet, it has not accepted the defeat of the love lost...or whatever has happened. It will continue.
the process of acceptance is truly a time consuming ritual. IT involves being good to yourself among other things...putting the fudge sauce on the ice cream...wearing the warm socks...smiling at yourself in the mirror..laughing...
It begs the question of what was their marriage like, the shrink and his wife.
The movie doesn't elaborate on the married life of the psychiatrist, it only goes into the depth of his despair. He doesn't connect to loving his wife as much as he does the losing of her through death. He cannot cope with the death and so he becomes like her, returning to dust, through the excessive use of mind altering substances which his family feel and attempt an intervention because of, cloud his judgment. He is, however, a realistic man and finds that once he understands what his grief is doing to him, he is able to pick up the pieces and continue his life, initiating contact with a potential girl friend, wearing pajamas to bed instead of falling into it still clothed for the previous day.
The Shrink is an interesting movie because it details what exactly our process is in terms of coping with grief. We have tears, we have an overwhelming feeling of sorrow, but what we cannot face is what we feel about what has happened to us. We try our best to blot it out but it is not until we face the reality of the circumstances: our true love has gone, our child, our parent..whatever the issue, then we are able to adjust to it, make it a part of our life. Until we are able to grasp the terms of the despair we feel...we cannot make any adjustment to it. Who knows how long it takes for an individual to come to this realization. It is as though we wrap ourselves in a great bundle of wool, something that insulates us, coccoons us, holds us in its cloudy web, until we begin to see the faint light of our reason coming to terms with the blow it has been dealt.
Some of us come upon this despair daily. These are the mentally depressed among us. For them the cloudy wool of our existence never truly leaves, but clots all reason with the condition of despair, that we may cling to that and not to the daily routine of our lives. We find we have no reason to have that daily routine. It matters little if the dust on the furniture deepens...we're not obliged to reason with that...it's there...so what... So it was with Spacey's psychiatrist character. He moved onward, you didn't see him frying any bacon...popping up some toast...he merely went forward with a sandwich shoved in his face...He was stopping up the grief with a little analgesic pastrami but it wasn't sizzling in the pan and giving up a wonderful aroma..it was merely there.
It takes a while to come to terms with grief. I prefer to think of grieve as the kidneys metabolizing and processing the eternal waste of the human soul..they've got a job to do, fluids, diuretic inducing foods, it helps somewhat but the main thing to do is to think positive about the daily routine...keep motivated to sweep, launder, dust, tidy, organize...and then contemplate what little thing has been accomplished, see it as the reality of your life. Little by little you can build on these daily accomplishments and see that they add up to a reality that coexists with grief, takes from it only the necessary, adjusts to the positive outcome. It takes a while, it becomes a matter of thought then, and the mind, the human mind, accepts that there is still a soul within the body, that the soul does not truly wish to join the great unknown just yet, it has not accepted the defeat of the love lost...or whatever has happened. It will continue.
the process of acceptance is truly a time consuming ritual. IT involves being good to yourself among other things...putting the fudge sauce on the ice cream...wearing the warm socks...smiling at yourself in the mirror..laughing...
No comments:
Post a Comment