Love and Death

Just finished watching Finding Neverland. Cried my little heart out during this scene. How can anyone miss the symbolism? So we cry but it's the kind of cry that feels really good, like it proves your alive, or that something you were feeling just got out, and now you can take a breath and recommit yourself to smelling the proverbial roses.

It got me thinking about other movies that do this for me: The Notebook, Shadowlands. Every time. Quite often the scene with sisters of Sense and Sensibility or a hidden scene from Tuck Everlasting.

What are the commonalities? There are two: death and love. And when I say love, I mean real love. Not hot and steamy; but the kind of love that makes you care for someone who is completely incapacitated and may not be able to give you anything in return -- completely unselfish. And these movies portray that kind of love.

In The Notebook, it is the scene when the old couple - one of whom has Alzheimer's - curl up to die, loving each other so much and through so much, together. In Shadowlands it is CS Lewis' total devotion to his wife who can't give him anything really, except her company, because she is so sick; and he didn't even figure out he loved her until she was sick. For Sense and Sensibility, it is Eleanor Dashwood's long-awaited expression of emotion over the one person she truly loves, her sister, as Marianne Dashwood lays dying.

I like the Tuck Everlasting scene for a slightly different reason. It's about death, but it portrays a twist on the theme. In the scene Winnie is deciding between immortality and mortality; her grandmother is old and very ill and as we see Winnie thinking about her decision, we also watch her mother tending over her grandmother, showing the close relationship those two have. And it showed me that dying is ok if you've lived well. It must have taught that to Winnie to who takes to heart Tuck's saying, "Don't be afraid of death, Winnie; be afraid of the unlived life."

And that is what is so gripping about all of these deaths. They are peaceful, though heartbreaking, because of love and a life well-lived. And it is in the moment of death that love is really manifest, because one realizes how important the beloved really is, how important the relationship is, and how all the things that mattered at one point just don't any more. So after Finding Neverland I remember that some stuff is fleeting and other things are worth living for and noticing.

What movies do this for you?