The Vow

My husband took me to see the new movie, The Vow, which is based on true events of a couple who were in a car accident and when the woman woke up, couldn't remember her husband, or the past 5 years of her life. You might think, "What does a review of a movie have to do with this blog? Hopefully, that will become clear as the review progresses.

Paige

First, I want to look at the movie from the perspective of Paige. She wakes up in the hospital after the accident and her fiance is not there. Her parents are not there. Her sister is not there. She is looking at a doctor she doesn't know. She is in a hospital she doesn't know which is in a city she does not know. Then there's a man telling her he is her husband. The past 5 years of her life is just...gone. She doesn't have any memory of it. Further, she remembered being in law school, not being an artist. It's almost as if everything she knew...and loved...died in that car accident, but everyone else around her had time to grieve it, because they lived it and dealt with the pain surrounding it. To them, the changes in her life happened a little bit at a time. She had no idea that she had been estranged from her family, or why. To Paige, the grief was instant. She lost something she once valued and nobody could understand enough to grieve with her. She was alone in grieving the only past that she could remember, and it didn't involve the strange man standing at the end of her hospital bed.

One could understand why Paige would want to cling to the things that she knows to help her through her emotional pain. Her parents were there to help pick up the pieces. Her sister was about to be married and those things were familiar. Living with her supposed husband in a strange city would certainly be overwhelming, especially after getting lost and not being able to find her way back to where they live. How does one find their way back from the pain of grief, fear, and confusion if not by being surrounded by the ones they love?

Leo

For Leo, he wakes up in the hospital and he's going to be okay, only to learn that his wife has a traumatic brain injury. He is forced to face the possibility that she might not live. He has to confront the possibility of losing his wife. This sets of a grieving process to prepare the soul for that very real outcome, yet he refuses to give up hope. He too, seeks the comfort of those he knows and loves.

When his wife finally wakes up, it is the greatest happiness he could imagine. But when she doesn't remember him, the grief sets in again. His wife was awake, speaking well, and moving on her own, but she does not remember their marriage, or their romance. He has lost her a second time.

When his wife gets lost in the city and cannot find her way home, she calls her mother and they "make a day of it" leaving him worried and helpless as he searches the city for her. It's understandable the grief he feels yet again in his desperate attempt to re-create the memories he and his wife shared. Their life together was an existence only shared with a few close friends and in the cells of his own mind. How does one deal with the pain and grief at a lost relationship? When his wife decides to move out to be around people she does remember, he has lost her a third time. He wrestles with the idea of not wanting to give up, weighed against the intense love that he has for Paige, so much that he wants her to have a life that is happy as it can be, even if it means it's without him.

The Parents

Upon learning of their daughter's accident and hospitalization, Paige's parents rush to her side. The are aware of their estrangement from their daughter, but she cannot remember it, so they take advantage of the lost memory. They take over as a hoovering mother and father, attempting to control the aspects of her life, including her hospitalization, her living arrangements, her rehabilitation, and her personal life.

To see the perspective of the parents, it would be comparable to imagining that our daughter Dayna had not died almost 3 years ago, but she was angry with us so much that she moved away and started a new life and hasn't spoken to us. If we had found out that Dayna had a severe seizure which left her not being able to remember the pat 3 years of her life, there is no doubt that we, too, would rush to her side and try to incorporate a refreshed relationship with the daughter who had been lost from us for so long.

Although the parents recognized and acknowledged that their daughter now had a husband, they were not privy to the courtship or the relationship. They could not see the love their daughter had for Leo in the eyes of their daughter. They had no idea the depth of emotion and affection that was held by this man they did not know, and their daughter who was returned to them after 5 years. The parents, not wanting to face the prospect of possibly losing their daughter again, basked in the reunion, and the implied forgiveness for whatever estranged them in the first place was a way of erasing not only the past 5 years, but the price they paid for it. We can see this when the father offers to assume the medical bills and get her re-enrolled in law school, perhaps as a way not only to atone for his mistake, but a subconscious way of erasing the grief at losing his daughter as well.

Although Paige (or the woman which the movie was based) did not ever re-gain her memory, her hands remembered her love for art. Her reasons for leaving her parents' home became evident. Her broken relationship with her past fiancee was again played out. She eventually realized that although her brain could not remember Leo, her heart did.

For me, the movie ended to abruptly. We do not get to see the second courtship of Paige and Leo. We do not get to see the remarriage of the two individuals. We do not get to see the healing that takes place between the two of them, her parents, or the fiancee. It left me wondering if there was a Part II.

But that's the way it is when we lose someone we love. The relationship we have with that person ends all too abruptly. Our brains, and our hearts, still remember. We can still feel them in the recesses of our brain, but a big piece of our life is...gone. We can still hold them in our hearts. We do not get to see the healing that takes place within us because it happens so slowly.

All we can do is know that we want them to have an eternal life that is as happy as it can be, even if it means that it's without us for a while. We cannot see the reunion that will someday take place with our daughter, but we can look forward to it and be assured that this isn't the end of the movie, it's just the end of Part I.