Most romance movies end right when life would actually start to get hard (go figure, right?). It usually goes something like this: someone falls in love, they kiss, the romantic music starts to play in the background and the screen fades to black. The end, right? What about the stories that begin after heartbreak, after losing someone they care about so deeply? Those are the love stories we don’t see enough of.
Movies like “P.S. I Love You” talked about this idea a bit. It showed how grief and love can happen at the same time, which means you can miss someone a lot but still want to fall in love with life again or with someone new. That feels closer to what really happens in our day-to-day life. Because in reality, people can lose the person they thought they would spend forever with. It’s devastating, but it’s also completely true and has happened to many people. Still, they have to keep living. The world doesn’t stop after losing their person as much as it might feel like it does.
Love after loss is not about forgetting about that person. It’s about finding who you are again when the person you loved so much isn’t around anymore. It’s about how weird, and perhaps uncomfortable, it feels to imagine a future again when you thought yours had already been figured out.
Movies have this incredible ability of helping us process our emotions by reminding us we’re not alone. Still, there are too many romance stories that still focus on the idea of perfect timing and have happy endings. That’s not how people or life actually works.
Love doesn’t end when someone dies. It lives on through the memories that were shared and the pain that’s being felt, and sometimes it can change into something new. (It doesn’t always though, and that should be okay too.) Movies should show that, both of these things. Because love after loss (whether that be with someone new or with a life without your partner) deserves to be seen as something real and possible. It reminds us we can still find light again.
