Client’s Reflections and
Recommendation of MovieMe
We
(MovieMe) received a lead from our friends at
http://www.NostalgicMedia.com
about a husband, Bob Harrison, who wanted to put together a
Celebration of Life party to honor the recent passing of his wife,
Diane. Below you will read what this journey was like for Bob and his
sons, Scot and Randy. And how we came together to create a legacy
product of an incredible woman, who touched so many people with
her love and commitment, especially with her husband, sons and
granddaughters.
Many
thanks to Bob, Scot and Randy for trusting MovieMe with this delicate
process.
by
Bob Harrison (husband to Diane Harrison, father to Scot and Randy)
It
has now been over five months since my wife of 46 years tragically
and quickly passed away. We were hiking in the Austrian
Alps when she first noticed
a slight abdominal pain which appeared to initially fade as we
returned from Europe. Then, over the course of a couple of
weeks, the pain intensified. Her doctor thought it was a deep
muscle strain associated with my wife pulling against the airplane
seat belt during our long transatlantic flight home.
Finally
during a quick trip to Washington
DC in mid-October, the pain
became much worse as she awakened in the hotel room before returning
home to Atlanta. I called her doctor and we arranged an
appointment immediately after our plane landed. The doctor
quickly told her to go to the Hospital Emergency Room and obtain a
lower abdomen CT
Scan. After multiple
additional tests the following week, Diane was diagnosed with Stage 4
Pancreatic
Cancer on October 26th.
On December 10th,
she died in her sleep at home while holding my hand. I provided
all of her palliative care at home while being assisted by our two
sons and the occasional critical visits by Hospice Nurses.
I
am sure there is no good or best way to die. This must be
especially the case when ones goes from appearing to be in perfect
health one day to leaving life two months later. However, when
compared to sudden, immediate death or a prolonging slow loss of
coherency and physical strength over many months and years; in
retrospect, I realize that we were spared more intense suffering and
grief. I do not think Diane was ever in physical
pain. We all suffered
emotionally as we realized and ultimately talked intimately about her
pending death and what a wonderful life we had lived together in
love.
During
the six weeks between Diane’s diagnosis and her death, my life was
solely reactively focused on providing for her comfort and
well-being. Since she physically deteriorated so quickly,
she quickly decided she only wanted to physically see my two sons and
me beyond her professional healthcare providers. My sons, both
living remotely, rotated through several times with my youngest son
sleeping upstairs in our home when Diane died at 438am on Saturday
morning. In order to attempt to react to all of Diane’s
friends and family members who were shocked in hearing about her
diagnosis, I was fortunate to find and fully utilize the CaringBridge
website. I posted periodic updates of her condition and she
received thousands of postings in response.
We
were overwhelmed with these postings, emails, cards, letters,
flowers, food, gifts and ultimately, charitable donations.
Hundreds of people voiced their frustration in not being able to
provide more support and actual help in Diane’s fight for life.
As
Diane’s death became eminent, I found myself praying for her peace
and comfort. She was such an extraordinary woman that I was
fully comforted in her life continuing in a life hereafter. I
often thought how my later years were always characterized in being
convinced that I would pre-decease
Diane. I was older and one always hears about the longer life
expectancy of healthy women
compared to men.
Many
years ago, Diane had begun voicing her desires to not have a
conventional funeral or burial service. I accepted this request
without really questioning her motives. However, I believe her
request was grounded in the many very sorrowful family funerals she
had attended over the years. She had merely requested that her
remains be cremated and ultimately mixed with my ashes with our sons
disposing of them in a “special location”.
As
Diane approached the end of her life, we had several extraordinary
intimate and special talks. Right until she started to sleep
continuously, about four days before she died, she continued to
attempt to “plan and organize”. She was very worried about
not being able to adequately respond to all the support we had
received from so many friends and family members. I shared her
worries since I viewed it being my job to express our sincere
appreciation. I was also worried about many other things that I
am sure burden any surviving spouses. Diane was a fantastic
mother and both of her grown sons worshiped her. Their lives
had been so influenced by her dedication, mentoring and hard work as
she left a professional career to be a full-time, stay-at-home
mother for both of them.
In
addition, I must admit that I did not feel right about not having
some form of memorial or ceremony to attempt to recognize Diane…a
truly wonderful woman, wife, mother and friend to so many.
Ultimately,
in one of our last short conversations together, Diane said…..”OK,
if you feel that we should do something, why don’t you have a
party”? In the emotion of the minute, I just casually
said “OK, I think we should do that”. This was
further reinforced with my final posting on CaringBridge when I
emotionally confirmed to all her followers that I was going to have a
Celebration of Life Party for Diane……sometime in the coming
months.
It
is now five months since Diane passed away. The grief and
sorrow are slowly fading with time, but the memories of Diane and the
great life we spent together will always remain. In addition,
it is now one month since we had the Celebration of Diane’s Life
Party. Herein lies the purpose of this narrative. I want
to share with you what an extraordinary event this party was and how
intensely it affected me, my two sons and everyone who attended it.
In
the days immediately following Diane’s death, my two sons and I
were together in our house focused on individually and collectively
trying to rationalize her death and try to deal with our personal and
collective grief and sorrow. It was then that we began to
discover the various forms of documentation that Diane, the family
historian, had developed over the years. There were twenty-one
photo albums. There was an album that her mother had given her
that contained all the postcards and letters Diane had sent her for
the first four years of our marriage. Diane had a twenty-seven
page document, called “Reflections” that contained her intimate
thoughts and narrations about her life. It was written over a
twenty year period. Diane also kept travel journals wherein she
chronicled our various domestic and international travels over the
last ten years of our marriage. We shared the postcards at the
event.
As
we discovered all of this, my two sons became enlightened in how we
could put this party together. It would be a simple case of
digitizing a cross-section of the photographs depicting Diane’s
life and then providing some narrative based on our memories and all
the written words Diane had left behind. It sounded so simple.
We
then selected 290 photographs that we thought properly depicted Diane
from infancy to our last trip together. I then personally began
the job of developing a written narrative of her life and all of the
appropriate personal quotations she had made. All three of us
envisioned just scrolling the photographs while narrating
appropriately.
When
delivering the 290 photographs to Nostalgic Media for their
digitizing, I was asked what I was ultimately going to do with the
resulting DVD.
I described our objective and was quickly told that what we had in
mind would be very difficult…..not only technically, but
emotionally. By some miracle Danielle West and her
company MovieMe was suggested to me.
I
called Danielle to see if she might be available to provide
assistance. The rest is history and ultimately ended up in the
Celebration of Diane’s Life being a transforming event for, not
only me and my sons, but for all the 150 other attendees.
Danielle singular provided the core competence to bring everything we
had together into a program and four different “movies” to be
used during the party.
My
narrative of Diane’s life ended up consuming 61 typewritten
papers. It took me several weeks to transcribe and the final
product was a very lengthy, intimate tale. My sons both
read it were concerned about the intimacy of the detail and how long
the narrative was. The other striking conclusion from our
reviewing this narrative was that none of us would be capable of
reading it. It just was too emotional for us.
The
digitized photographs came out well and were put into chronological
order easily. I then met for the first time with Danielle. Her
sensitivity, principles and character came blasting through when she
became quite emotional about Diane and how much she wished she had
known her.
In
a very sensitive manner, Danielle led me to the process by which we
would develop the process for the program. The program would be
composed of a continuously scrolling rotation of approximately 25
photographs of Diane from infancy to our final hiking trip to the
Alps 3 months before she died. This continuously playing movie
would be played in the gathering/cocktail bar area where party guests
would first arrive and meet.
The
second and most consequential “movie” would be approximately 30
minutes of life-story photographs of Diane that would be narrated.
Danielle quickly understood the challenges of my participating in the
narration and ultimately decided that she would personally voice
Diane’s direct quotations and a local actor, Tom Clark, would
provide the 3rd
party narration. I was tremendously relieved.
Diane
had written a letter in her deathbed to her 7 year old
granddaughter. This letter was given to her parents who were
told to give it to Elisabeth in the future “when they feel she is
old enough”. Elisabeth’s father, our oldest son Scot, would
read the letter at the party and there would be a scrolling picture
movie depicting Diane at various times with her granddaughters,
Elisabeth and her 3-year old sister, Isabella.
I
then provided Danielle with a list of approximately 10 songs that
were Diane’s favorites. Danielle then did the amazing job of
coordinating the scrolling photographs with the music and with the
narrative. The final product was an extraordinary
representation of the life of a woman who was uniquely capable of
loving and being loved.
On
April 14, 2012, one hundred and fifty close friends and family
members attended The Celebration of Diane’s Life. Many of the
people attending did not know each other since they came from various
periods of her life. They came from four different companies
and fourteen different states. No one really knew what to
expect. No one had ever been to a “Party” of this type.
The
party unfolded perfectly. The pictures, narrative and music
surged from being very sad and emotional to being invigorating and,
at times, humorous. When the final movie clipped closed and I
closed the party with my hands pointing up and said “Diane, I am
Coming, Thank you”, all the attendees immediately stood up and came
forth with a standing ovation. I cried to myself.
As
Diane’s close friends and family left, they all sought out me and
my sons. I have never heard so many emotional comments about
the experience at the party. Several women hugged me and were
crying.
Over
the next weeks, I received huge written thank you notes expressing
emotions that are rarely put in writing. Three of my male
friends took me out to lunch and jokingly indicated they were very
mad with me. Apparently, their wives had taken them aside after
the party and declared that they did not want a funeral.
Rather, they wanted to have a party just like Diane’s.
I
am now reflecting up the unique accomplishments of this party.
It accomplished everything that I could have dreamed of…….and
more.
The
preparation of the party and culminating with the party provided a
turning point for our recovery from the tragedy of Diane’s death.
We no longer feel sorry for ourselves and are wallowing around in
grief and sorrow. Diane’s party provided a pivot for our
focusing on the blessings of her life and the huge positive impact
she would always have on our lives.
The
party provided a perfect mechanism for me to thank everyone for all
the many gifts and messages of support that were sent to Diane as she
was dying. Everyone was frustrated with their inability to help
Diane as she approached the end of her life. However, this
party reconfirmed their ongoing love for Diane and her love for them.
The
party also honored a remarkable woman. It was a “love story
and a war story”. It depicted in pictures and words how a
beautiful woman affected so many people in what she did, how she did
it and who she was.
If
you are faced with the personal tragedy of the death of a loved
one….if you and need help in managing your grief, voicing your
appreciation and/or honoring your loved one; Danielle West/MovieMe
has a magic wand of creativity with deeply seeded emotion.
