Family Ties

I want to start today off by saying HI to our newest follower Olivia!  I kept wanting to do a shout out last week but my hockey brain kept blocking it out when I actually sat down to write =s  Now even though the Canucks won last night to take a 3-0 lead in their series against the Chicago Blackhawks, I feel guilty about all the hockey talk that dominated last week so I thought I'd focus on something a bit closer to home today.

"There are two sides to every story"

I'm a couple of years late but I finally watched Brothers.  For those of you that can't remember that far back, this movie stared Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman and was centered around a family dealing with the supposed death of a US Marine in Afghanistan.  It is a story of family, love, honour, will, fear & survival that asks, what would you do to find your way home again?  How would you move forward when the unimaginable happens?

I thought this story was compelling, distressing, and sometimes even disturbing.  I have no experience with military life or the rigors associated with it but I felt like this was a fairly accurate portrayal.  There wasn't any sugar coating or over exaggeration, and it felt honest in a way that made my heart and head ache.  I felt unsatisfied with the conclusion because it left us without the typical happy ending, but that's exactly what we're faced with every day.  There is no such thing as happy endings because it implies that's where your story ends, when really, it's just beginning.