On Marley and Me and Plans

I made a big mistake last night; I watched Marley and Me. I knew it was a mistake as I settled in to watch it. When Ben called halfway through my viewing and found out what I was watching, he exclaimed, "WHY DO YOU HATE ME???" But I still watched it and was a sobbing, red-eyed mess by the end of it.

When I first read John Grogan's memoir in 2007, it felt like watching our lives in fast forward, but I had no ideas the parallels that would emerge. Like the miscarriage scene. My copy of the book is tucked away in a box in Wisconsin or my friend Mindy's house, but I remember his description of that event fairly vividly. And in the film, well, it's pitch perfect. The dulled response of Grogan's wife Jen, played by Jennifer Aniston, when she sees her empty uterus. Her vacant stare as they drive home. Owen Wilson's Grogan who desperately tries to remain upbeat, saying things like, "We can try again," "We just need to take a break from trying for a while," and "Can I make you tea?" - anything to try to shake her from the eerie, devastating calm. And then, when he has his back turned, their yellow lab Marley puts his head in Jen's lap and she collapses into his furry neck, the dog somehow making it okay for the stoic exterior to dissolve. It was a scene that replayed itself here last August and last November.

Yes, I am a lot like Jen. Jen who at the beginning of the film has a mental list of all the life goals they will hit in their marriage - jobs, house, dog, baby. A list, admittedly, not unlike my own. But by the end of the film she's given up on plans. When Grogan looks at their lives in Philadelphia, he says, "None of this was in the plan!" To which she responds, "No, none of this was in the plan. But it is so much better than anything we planned. I've given up on plans." (I'm paraphrasing here.)

I think I'm starting to get to that place - the place where you give up on plans. It's been a gradual transition, and it started at that moment when Sully put his head in my lap last August. Life has been unpredictable, devastating, and wonderful in the past ten months. And in the midst of all this, plans were simply not an option. In recent weeks, as we've faced a whole onslaught of new transitions, I find myself groping for my plans again. With every really lovely thing that happens, I find myself thinking, or sometimes telling others outright, "Yes, but it should happen this way" or "Yes, but now we need to worry about this thing." It's like I'm saying to myself, "If I can get it all to fit in this elusive plan it will be safe, we will be secure, all this unpredictability will stop." This, I know, is not true. And really, all I am succeeding in doing is driving myself crazy. I hate that I'm not celebrating all these thing, enjoying them for the great things they are, and just worrying away the joy.

So I need to let go of the plans. Because really our lives have taken a course that is better than anything we planned. And yes there are things that are hard and unpredictable, but really, as I told my oldest sister when I was five, my life is pretty magical. And that's what I should be focusing on and delighting in these days.

Yes, I know I'm being a bit ambiguous about what all these magical things are. I need to write them down, and I will. I just think I need to live with them a little bit longer, and perhaps let go of my outdated expectations a bit more, before I can put them into words.