Widow's Walk: Movie Therapy

I just read and reviewed Mia March's The Meryl Streep Movie Club, the September selection for She Reads. In the novel, there are four women who have experienced devastating losses. Lolly lost her husband, sister, and brother in law and raised her own daughter as well as her two nieces. Now the girls are grown, but Lolly calls them all back to the bed and breakfast to help her as she battles cancer.

Movie night has long been a tradition at The Three Captain's Inn and Lolly declares this time as Meryl Streep movie time. As they watch the movies, their lives often mirror some of the action of the movies. It is therapeutic, but it is also a gateway that opens each of the characters up to conversation while encouraging them to help and encourage one another.

After my husband died, there were movies that I clung to. Nights in Rodanthe, both the novel and the movie. It was the last movie Mike and I saw at the theatre. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen it, but when it got to the end, Mike was really surprised when Paul dies. If you read or watch Nicholas Sparks' work, you know somebody always dies. 

As Adrienne portrayed by Diane Ladd grapples with Paul's death, I would cry too. It was often hard for me to let myself go. I was afraid once I started, I wouldn't be able to stop. Through the movie, I knew that it would keep me on the same timeline as the movie and that once the credits rolled, my tears would begin to cease.

The other movie that was therapy for me was P.S. I Love You, which is about a young widow, who receives letters from her late husband. This man never had a plan during their marriage, but as brain cancer took his life, he wrote letters and left instructions for his wife. He sends her out on her birthday, has her sing in a bar, and visit his beloved, native Ireland, which is where they also met. She grieves, she misses him, and she also finds out who she is again.