Grace Is Gone 2007

The movie "Grace is Gone" portrayed the grief of lost of a family member by focusing on the grief of a husband losing his wife. The father, Stanley Philip lost his military wife through a battle, and is struggling all by himself while trying to keep the truth away from his daughters. From here, the audience could observe Stanley's fatherly love. Furthermore, this movie showcased how Stanley deal with his lost through different methods that could be explained through Kübler-Ross model of stages of grief.


The Kübler-Ross model explained that there are five stages of grief (Patricelli, 2017):

Picture adopted from http://www.change-management-coach.com/kubler-ross.html

1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

Stanley Phillip's struggled in handling his grief when he found out that his wife passed away in battle. He goes through the first stage of grief in Kübler-Ross model which is denial. When Stanley asked his daughters to not eat the casserole given by someone in their neighbourhood, it is a portrayal of him not wanting to accept the reality of his lost of wife by not accepting sympathy and consolation from the people around him. This is because somebody might have been told about the death of his wife and hence that person left a plate of food and a note out of sympathy.

Another scene which portrayed Stanley's denial stage of grief is when Stanley called back home to listen to his wife's pre-recorded voice message on his house phone was a way for Stanley to feel his wife's presence. It could be that one of the most functional method of coping with the of lost of a loved one is to maintain an ongoing relationship with the person who has passed away (Klass et al., 1996; Moules & Amundson, 1997; Moules et al., 2004, 2007; Rosenblatt, 1996, as cited in Bouchel, Rallison, Moules, & Sinclair, 2015). The bonds that is maintained despite the deceased of a person helps the alive person to go on in living (Moules et al., 2004, as cited in Bouchel, Rallison, Moules, & Sinclair, 2015). Through this, the audience could tell that Stanley was still in the first stage of his grief, which is denying that his wife has passed away and trying to continue his life normally by connecting to his wife through listening to her voice.

Holding on to something that connects us to the deceased person is a way to cope with grief. This could also explain the reason of some people walking around the place where he or she once used to share with the deceased person. In this movie, Stanley brought his two daughters back to Enchanted Garden, an amusement park that they have been as a family before the death of his wife. The place that Stanley have chosen to go takes on meaning to preserve a reality where his wife is still alive. And by not telling his children that their mother has gone could temporarily preserve a reality where the wife is still alive, that they are spending their last holiday as a family together.

The movie did not focus much on anger, bargain, and depressed stages of Kübler-Ross model, instead the movie emphasized on the denial of the father and ended with the acceptance stage of Kübler-Ross model by the family members. This can be seen from the scene where Heidi read out her report on her mom during the mom's funeral in the church.

Through this movie, I have realized that life is short and we should celebrate life together and appreciate it before it is too late. Life could be very fragile and we should treat every day as our last presence by living in the moment and doing what you want to do. Once things happened, we could not run away from reality, though we could temporarily just like how Stanley did in the movie. But the truth is, we cannot run away forever. Anyhow, we will have to face it one day.


References:
Bouchal, S. R., Rallison, L., Moules, N. J., & Sinclair, S. (2015). Holding on and letting go. Omega: Journal Of Death & Dying, 72(1), 42-68. doi:10.1177/0030222815574700

Patricelli, K. (2017). Stage of grief models: Kubler-Ross. Retrieved from http://www.amhc.org/58-grief-bereavement-issues/article/8444-stage-of-grief-models-kubler-ross