Feeling Down while Watching UP

It was the first rainy day of summer break, so we spent it watching movies and playing games.  James requested UP, which we just got from the library yesterday (Oh yes, I'm that together, we picked up a few movies and some new books in time to spend all day inside).  I haven't seen it for awhile, partly because watching it always makes me cry.  It may be the most emotionally charged animated movie ever.  I still remember the first time we watched it, with 3 year old James and baby Winston snuggled on either side of me, buttered popcorn and a quiet family night.  And then...the first twenty minutes.  Tears. 

I see myself in Ellie.  The young girl with crazy hair who maybe talks too much, who dreams of seeing the world and having adventures, who owns a blank scrapbook because she is waiting to fill it.  Then she gets old as life happens, and she never does go to Paradise Falls.  So her husband determines to honor her memory by flying their house to South America and parking it next to the waterfall, just the way she drew it when she was 8.  The movie is almost over when he finds her old scrapbook, assuming its still empty.  But then we all discover that she did in fact fill it in, that her adventures turned out to be living a life that seemed ordinary.  The second time I watched UP, I noticed that Ellie has tape and scissors in her hospital room, just before she hands Carl the scrapbook.  She wanted to finish it before her life ended, to let him know that she was glad at how things had turned out, that he hadn't let her down by never taking her to South America.  I hope my own husband knows this.  That if I die first and he finds my diary from when I was 18, the one that actually has a "10 Year Plan" entered in it, almost none of which I've actually done, that he'll know that my life has been an adventure, way more exciting and worthwhile than anything I dreamed of when I was a teenager.  That I wouldn't trade a single poopy diaper or this lumpy, post-baby body for an exciting job in a big city or a fabulously decorated home that always stays clean.

http://youtu.be/3zfJvTXKdsg

Later, I was struck by the unlikely band of friends that comes together in this movie.  Mr. Fredrickson, the grumpy widower.  Russell, the abandoned boy.  Dug, the dog who just wants a master's love.  And I thought of loneliness, how we can miss all the people around us who are suffering from it.  How the solution is so simple...just walk out your front door, and you will find a little boy in need of a father-figure, an old man who is living with regrets.  We don't need to be perfect or special, just present.  And opening ourselves to others is an adventure all by itself.  When we let people into our lives, even if we do it thinking that we are doing them a big favor, we cannot help but be altered by it.  It will make us see more clearly, teach us the actual, real definition of love.

Grandpa during WW2

 And as if that were not enough, as if watching this movie had not already wrecked me...I found out yesterday that my Grandpa has pancreatic cancer.  My best friend's mother had pancreatic cancer, and she died 10 weeks after her diagnosis.  So what are the chances of an 86 year old man?  I've never been super close with any of my grandparents, and I made my feelings about the elderly clear, but this man has always existed in my life, strong, independent, full of life, and I've gotten used to thinking of him this way.  I realized I almost expected him to just keep going, year after year, not realizing that each year just brought him closer and closer to this point of illness and old age.  I'm not ready to lose him, this man whose birthday is a day before mine, who makes quick jokes and has a beautiful singing voice.  And I wonder about my grandma, with her very loose grip on reality.  What will it mean for her to lose her companion of the last 65 years?  Will she find a new adventure like Carl, or spend the rest of her days waiting to die?

Grandma and Papa

I guess the hardest thing about watching UP is the way it forces me to acknowledge how little I know, how elusive "the answers" really are.  For a completely fantastical movie (1,000 balloons can lift a house and fly it to another continent?), it is such a mirror, a reality check.