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Thursday 1 January 2015

Thoughts Ending with I’m Ok, I’m Alright

The nice thing about my thoughts is that for the most part they don't really need to fit in to my blog timeline. So though blog Lyn is stuck back in August 2013 real Lyn is firmly in January 2015. As I start yet another year a wandering widow (there will be more wandering this year, honest!) I spent the first day watching P.S. I Love You. A film that reminds me how bad it (I!?!) was and how far I have come. Anyway, these are the thoughts inspired by watching said film.

Disclaimer: Whilst I strongly identify with the main character this does not mean that our journeys are the same. For instance I would like to reassure my friends and family that at no point in my widdowhood have I felt the need to terrorise unsuspecting innocent bystanders by indulging in karaoke.

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I watch P.S. I love you every so often. It makes me cry every time though I’ve progressed from continuous noisy messy tears to crying quietly (but still messily, I am not one of life’s pretty criers) at the most poignant parts. It’s interesting to me how different widow’s react to this film and to me it highlights just how different our journeys all are. One widow once commented on how offensive she found it. Especially the scene when one of the widow’s friends accuses her of getting upset because everyone else was moving on and she was no longer the centre of attention. For me that scene resonated oh so well. Maybe it’s an age thing, both physical and mental.  I was 27 when I was widowed, the character in the film 29. We were childless and just starting to make our way in the world with no real need to be entirely properly grown-up just yet, as were the couple in the film. Well like the widow in the film I grew up pretty fast in a short space of time.

That’s why I watch it. Why, is the question people always ask when I tell them I like to watch to occasionally. I can understand the disbelief. Isn’ t it too close to home? Well yes, and that is why. It makes me cry as it reminds me of the daft things we did. I don’t see this as a bad thing as often I feel better after a good cry, especially during the harder days. It makes me smile when they show the couple as imperfect yet just right for one another, like we were. When we hear his last letter I like to think that Josh would want the same for me, to see myself as he did. Most of all it gives me hope.

Every time I watch the film I’m at a different place in my life. I always see something different but every time one thing is the same, at the end there is hope. She still loves her husband but she is learning how to live again. The film jumps forward in time so it doesn’t pretend to be an overnight occurrence. It takes time, tears, effort and love. The love of her husband helps her acknowledge his disappearance from her life. The love from her family supports her and her mother’s occasionally blunt honesty reminds me of my mum, I know and value that she will always tell me the truth no matter how much it hurts. The love from her friends, who hang on in there and forgive when the misery of her grief blinds her to their joy.

This film gave me hope when I was early on that I could build a new life. In the film the husband says his wife made his life yet he was but one chapter in hers. For me and Josh it was the same. It is and always will be a great sadness to me that his life and consequently our chapter was too short. My life however goes on and I hope that the chapters formed over the past five and three quarter years are nothing compared to those still to come. And so ends this post with the words from the films end song that always strike a chord with me.

“She says I'm okay; I'm alright,
Though you have gone from my life
You said that it would,
Now everything should be all right”

P.S. I love you xxx

2 comments:

  1. We watched PS I Love You the night before he suddenly died. I sobbed all of the way through it, he laughed at me. We had a conversation about death, to this day I cannot remember most of that conversation. It took me years to be able to watch it again, It felt like a right of passage when I did, I knew I was in a much better place, that I had left the darkest of days behind. Thank goodness for my MW mates x

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    1. It's weird, I know I saw it before Josh died but I cannot for the life of me remember what I thought of it. I too though know that for all our differences I would have been lost with out my MW mates. Thank goodness for the internet is all I can say! Hugs x

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