I'll Meet You There

There's certain movies I know not to watch before I do, because it's gauranteed I'll be curled up in a ball on my couch, blanket over me, a box of tissues in hand, sobbing into them. I'm one of those old people kids made fun of, including myself, that cry hysterically over movies. And even though I know I shouldn't watch them, I do it anyway.

Tonight's example: The Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie - The Lost Valentine.

In my defense, I didn't realize going into this how hard this movie was going to be for me to watch. As soon as Betty White's character was shown as a grandmother and not just a cute little old lady, I started balling. I still really miss my grandma. I imagine I always will. Until now, I've avoided movies specifically about grandmas and close relationships with grandmas because of this. I was done about three minutes into this movie. I trooped on, however, because the movie featured two of my favorite actresses, Betty White and Jennifer Love Hewitt. It could have only been better if Jane Lynch was there, too, but I digress.

It would have been very generic of me to say a movie made me cry because the main character was a grandma, I realize. So let me back up to the first two minutes of the movie where it's revealed that her husband, her lost valentine, was in the Air Force. Yep, I lost it there first, officially. My grandfather, my best friend in the entire world, was in the Air Force. His Air Force picture still hangs in our hallway so we pass it every single day. I miss him, too, more than words can say. I felt like it was all the things that hit too close to home all in one movie.

I won't get into the whole thing and ruin the plot for those of you who haven't seen it. There were several scenes that made me ball like a baby, especially the one toward the end with Betty White and the casket. But it was the end scene that did me in. If you haven't seen the movie and still want to, I'm warning you not to read past here.

At the end of the movie, Jennifer Love Hewitt's character and Betty White's movie grandson are in the yard when the sprinklers come on, flashing back to and earlier scene in the movie when Betty and her movie husband had just moved into that very same house and the same thing happened to them. As that happened, Betty was in the back yard watering her flowers. This was post her deceased husband's arrival in the casket after sixty-six years, in the very same train station she saw him off on on Valentine's day those sixty-six years ago. After she said to the man who worked at the station and greeted her every year when she went back to wait for him on that same day, "My husband is coming home today." And he did, in a casket, but he was home.

As she was standing outside of her house with the hose, she noticed that the rose bush her husband had planted when they first moved in and that had been dead for years was blooming. Just as she went to water it, the song she and her husband used to dance to came on the radio just inside of the window. Then they showed him in his Air Force uniform. He had come to take her. And while her movie grandson and J.Love's character repeated their love story in the front yard, she went with her husband, who was finally home.

I had no shiz left to lose at this point. I was full out leaving it all over the couch and the tissues I had run out of. When my grandma passed away, she came to say goodbye. With her was my grandfather...dressed in his Air Force uniform. That uniform hangs in my closet, a reminder of my grandfather's greatest feat. And as it is in life, a person's greatest, most important job, is the one they will do in death.