Preoccupation with experiences missed and moments that should have been plague anyone who has ever lost someone. Yet when the grief has passed, one sometimes feels a twinge of guilt for having learned how to cope without them, as if by overcoming the misery you’ve somehow let them down. How can you move on without forgetting? How do you love again without feeling that you’ve betrayed the deceased by filling your heart with an emotion other than heartache?

These are questions that Jim Sheridan’s In America (2002) grapples with. A beautiful film about an Irish family struggling with grief, it suggests that one must “say goodbye” to those who have gone before in order to truly live – a concept I found a little hard to swallow at first.

After the death of young Frankie, the Sullivan family moves to New York City to escape from the pain and start anew; however, the loss of his son has robbed Johnny Sullivan of the ability to feel joy as well as sadness. Johnny watches as his family slowly picks up the pieces and learns to live again, yet he finds himself unable to think of anything but the fact that Frankie is dead while he has regrettably been left alive. His heartbreak turns to bitterness towards his family. He feels that by moving on they’ve betrayed Frankie’s memory – as if Frankie deserved to be grieved for eternity.

When Johnny spitefully accuses his wife Sarah of forgetting Frankie, she replies that she had to for their other children. Just because they lost their brother should not mean they lose their mother, too. And, In the face of extraordinary events that follow, Johnny must “say goodbye” to Frankie in order to move on for the sake of his family as well as himself.

But the concept sounds so cruel, and despite the poignant screenplay dripping with the wisdom that can only come from personal experience, I found myself wondering if what the film suggests is truly necessary.

In cases of extreme grief, must we forget in order to live again?

When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, I remember promising, or rather, assuring myself that I would think about him every day of my life. Sadly, a few months after his death, I realized that I wasn’t living up to my promise.

However much you love someone, once the grieving period has passed it can be very difficult to dwell on his or her death. From time to time, you think of him or her and are grateful for the person’s presence in your life, but that presence is very rarely one that casts a shadow on your soul once the grief has subsided. Like Sarah’s “forgetting” Frankie to focus on her living children, life naturally fixates on other life.

Then it occurred to me that when Johnny says goodbye to Frankie, he is merely letting go of his grief, not forgetting his little boy completely. He bids farewell to the “dead Frankie,” so he can dwell on his son’s life, maintaining the love for the little boy while letting go of the bitterness associated with his death.

In America, concocts a convincing recipe to overcome grief, saying that we should bid farewell to the sorrow and to the death, not to the person and the life they lived. Though easier said than done, the film promotes an acceptance of life as well as death and the realization that death is merely a forgettable ending to a life worth remembering.