- A blog Think piece, reflecting about how fictional works such as Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping have shown the process of personal growth after losing someone dear.
“Always and Forever, In this Heart of Mine.” -
- © Over the Moon. (2020). Netflix
Love and grief are two vastly complex concepts that seem almost contradictory. In the past few months, I have come to see how these juxtaposing concepts of love and grief can form a painful, yet beautiful melody that resonates close to the heart, especially when it deals with losing someone loved. Of course, the grief of losing someone loved is such a difficult experience to describe or portray in literary works, but it is an experience universal to everyone at different moments in life. As someone who has also experienced grief from sudden loss. I took particular interest in how different authors or literature can portray this.
Needless to say, countless literature works have handled such themes of losing someone loved. Titanic, Lion King, Forest Gump, Wonder Woman, UP! – Have all dealt with the loss of someone dear. Yet, I can recall fewer works that have explored the impact of loss on the character’s personal growth or seen works that have delved deeper into how significant their journey of healing and moving on is
Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping is one literary piece that covers the personal growth that comes from loss. Her novel tells a significant story of how losing someone close does not signify that love is lost. On the contrary, she encourages that because one has lost and grieved, it shows just how valuable and significant that person was initially. Their departure just like their spirit lingers in the soul of those that are left behind, allowing the person to not only persevere, but use what they have learned from the ones they loved as strengths to carry on living.
Housekeeping’s story also highlights the importance of being able to express the painful emotions out instead of letting those feelings anchor us down to a point of not letting us move forward. By doing so Housekeeping encourages impermanence. Housekeeping is conveying that to embrace those feelings of grief is to cope with what has occurred, and as a result it helps the process of letting go of what was once taken for granted in order to move forward.
The novel Housekeeping takes the inevitable aspects of losing someone loved and instead works those themes into a novel about the strength and healing of grief through love. This portrayal is both emotionally deep and relatable. The novel’s take on grief and love encourages the inner strength that can emerge after losing someone close. Housekeeping, similar to a movie I watched recently on Netflix called Over the Moon, shows how grief has also impacted the character’s emotional growth significantly, but eventually by loving again, by letting go, by embracing grief, and by carrying the departed’s spirit with them they are able to gain strength into moving on with life. Both Housekeeping and Over the Moon* are perfect literary works showing how grief and love combined are essential in a process of moving on. It can be emotionally painful, but in the long run, also liberating.
Hence, when faced with a difficult task such as letting Jack go or moving on.
Let go. Mourn. Heal. Move on. Live and love.
* Additional Short Clip Video Demonstrating the Collaborative Themes between grief, love, and moving on of Over the Moon as educational reference. All rights go to the respective owners of Over the Moon.
References:
Keane, Glen, director. Over the Moon. Netflix, 23 Oct. 2020, www.netflix.com/title/80214236.
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