When two people suffer a mutual loss : The Starling

I watched the movie The Starling this afternoon which stars Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd who play parents impacted by the sudden death of their daughter.. As so often happens a mutual loss separates them, the father character tries to take his life and ends up in psychiatric care, the mother presses on alone at home where she is daily ‘attacked’ by a starling..

What a wonderful movie and gosh did it resonate especially when it gets down to the nitty gritty of two people who love each other but do not really know how to show that love nor to grieve, communicate and fully process the experience, and yet that too is the journey portrayed in the movie. It helped too when the doctor/vet character Kevin Kline said to the female character “I bet you feel angry when your husband tried to take his life.” She denies it but it made me realize times I have felt angry that my sister tried to check out when we were both struggling and that she retreated while i stayed in life trying to front up despite so many pressures and challenges. Of course neither of us handled things the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way we were just affected by multiple levels of grief and each handled (or could not handle it) differently..

Movies though can be a great source of understanding into our human struggles and this one really resonated with me.. so I thought I would share it this evening in my blog. The soundtrack to the movie is beautiful.

Some things are just out of our control and the sooner you figure out what they are the faster you can let them go