Story, part 1 - Endings

I watched this movie the other night that really affected me. I don't want to tell you the name of it:
1. because you'd make fun of me

and

2. because I'm gonna give away the ending.

It's the story of these two people who fall in love. The kind of love that consumes you from the inside out. I know, it's Hollywood, so what other kind of love would there be? But I'm a romantic and totally bought into it. Anyway, they both have these kind of tragic pasts which makes their love for one another that much more intense and magical. (And which made me love the story even more).

It's a typical movie in that you root for them to figure it out, to make it work, to forgive each other when they mess up, and they do. But then something unusual, for Hollywood, happened. One of them died. On one hugely tragic day, a main character died along with many others. I watched transfixed as the significant other and the character's family grieved this loss. It was so sad to think of them going through yet another tragedy. It was too much. No family could survive under that. The story wasn't supposed to be over...but the movie was. That's how it ended.

It wasn't a typical Hollywood ending because no one watching wanted it to end that way. No one thought, "Yes, the main character should die tragically at the end of the movie and leave the other person to grieve another crushing loss. Yes, that would be really satisfying." No one thought that. No one wanted that. But that's how the story ended.

As I left the theater, though, I thought how no one who died on that day in real life (it was 9/11) was done with their story either. No one went into work thinking, "I've lived my life, I've loved enough, I'm okay with not making it home today." No one thought that, because their stories weren't over either. They had husbands or wives, kids or roommates, moms in the hospital or little brothers needing to be picked up from school. They had dreams of the next day and year and decade. But their story was over. Just like that.

They weren't in a Hollywood movie where a test audience decides if the ending is just right. I heard once, though I don't know if it's true, that Pretty Woman's original ending had Julia Roberts strung out on drugs in some seedy hotel room while Richard Gere went back to business. It was a romantic comedy with a decidedly tragic ending. But (not surprisingly) the audiences didn't like it. So they changed it all around and gave the insanely happy fairytale ending where every need of every character is met and they ride happily off into the sunset together.

We don't get to choose our endings. I don't mean to be morbid, but today reminds me of this fact. We don't choose our ending, but the miraculous fact is that even when the ending is most tragic, God can redeem the story.

To be continued...