Perfect Moment Memories

Over the years I’ve mentally collected “Perfect Moments” from book and screen and I’m finally writing down some of them so I’ll remember them.

Right now I’m reading The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.

This paragraph made my breath catch in my throat. I won’t tell you what precipitated this anguish, in case you decide to read the book, but I record it here for my own recollection.

Pg. 296-297

“There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feelings. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.”

Moment #2:

Decades ago I watched a movie called “Green Card” with Andie MacDowell (or Andie McDougal as Buds insists upon calling her) and Gerard Depardieu. It is a brutally painful movie to watch, especially now since it is a completely ’90’s film, but it has one brief moment that has stayed with me since I first saw it in the early ’90’s.

The payoff moment is around 9:00. I beg of you to jump to that moment and not expend 9 minutes of your life to get there.

The set up is that they agreed to get married and pretend to be in love so he could get his green card to stay in this country. They get found out and he’s being deported, although they have now realized they are actually in love.

The look he sends into the sky at around 9:03 absolutely breaks my heart and inspires me all at once. The rest of the film is schlock, but that moment is money.

Moment #3:

Next in the line up is this beautiful wall hanging that Brendan’s parents found and gifted to J & B.

This is the sort of perfect gift that happens once in a lifetime:

Moment #4:

And with another win for W. H. Auden and an Andie MacDougal movie, Four Weddings and A Funeral, this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_a-eXIoyYA

I trust there’s no need to explain the perfection of this summation of grief and tender love.

Send me your perfects and I’ll add them to this post.