Grace is Gone_Unspeakable Pain

This film is a pretty sad film. The feeling of sadness is unspeakable to their daughter (Heidi and Dawn) as a father (Stanley Phillips). However, the emotion of grief has to be expressed in order to fully accept the truth and get out of the sadness.

We could notice that Stanley experienced 5 stages of grief from the moment he got the unfortunate news. The 5 stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

Primarily, he was in the stage of Denial. He denied the truth that his wife, Grace, was killed in Iraq. He tried to not talk about their mother in front of Heidi and Dawn. He just tried to act normal. He also tried to escape from the reality. He called home and informed her wife that they were alright and they were heading to Enchanted Gardens to have some fun.

Later on, in the stage of Anger, he showed some angers while he was talking to his daughters. Anger is an emotion that would apparently impact the people surrounds you. Stanley might feel that he was abandoned in certain extend because he had to deal with the grief and the daughters alone at that moment. For instance, he kept putting pressure on Heidi and asked Heidi to have some funs together. Probably he just wanted to pretend that his wife was actually still alive, so the family was still complete and they should be joyful as usual. However, he got mad when his daughter told him that she felt stressful from being asked to have funs. This scene probably symbolized that the illusion of happiness he wanted to maintain was destroyed by her daughter, so he got angry. And also he got really angry when John tried to pursue Stanley to inform the daughters the truth. He even pushed him to hit the door.

Bargaining is the third stage. Taking the girls for a trip is also a way to show Stanley’s thoughts about bargaining. After taking them out from the D&B Game Centre, he asked the girls where they wanted to go and Dawn suggested Enchanted Gardens as an option. At that moment, Stanley agreed with it and said “What if we did?” This question symbolized that he might able to get rid of the pain if he could do something for it.

During the stage of four, Depression, he made the second call to Grace is to show his depression and sadness. At first, he seems like he was to deny the truth again, but actually he cried and had started the process of accepting the truth by asking Grace to tell him what to do. He showed the sign that he was kind of losing the direction.

He was in the stage of Acceptance when they were on the way back to home. Obviously, informing their children the truth, holding their child and crying with them together were to show his acceptance about what had happened to him and the daughters. He accepted the truth that grace was gone.The scene of reading a eulogy and three of them presenting in front of the grave is a pretty wrap up to show that they were ready to accept a new phase of life after the great loss.

            Sometimes the person would not strictly follow the sequence to experience the 5 stages. However, throughout the whole trip to Enchanted Gardens, it could be seen as a trip to go through the 5 stages of grief.