Mom’s trying to manage the caterers, the florists, and all the other hustle and bustle that comes with a wedding reception. Dad’s shooting blanks at the birds to make them vacate the premises. Jackson, the groom, is sneaking into Shelby’s room to tell her how much he loves her. However, amidst the laughter, beauty, and romance, there are clues that Shelby might not get the happy ending she’s hoping for. Shelby and her mom head to Truvy’s beauty shop to get her hair done before here wedding. As Shelby is happily talking about skinny-dipping with her soon-to-be husband and rhapsodizing about her very pink wedding, she suffers a hypoglycemic attack and her mother forces her to drink orange juice to raise her blood sugar. She recovers quickly, but her mom tells their friends that the doctor told Shelby she shouldn’t have children. We also learn that Shelby considered ending her engagement to Jackson so that he could have children with someone else. He wouldn’t even consider it and said they could adopt kids.
We see Shelby walking down the aisle with her father, the happy reception, and then life goes on for Shelby and Jackson. We see her visiting her mamma, M’Lynn, periodically and then coming home for the Christmas festival. It’s Christmastime when Shelby tells her mother that she’s pregnant and all she wants is for her mother to be happy for her. However, M’Lynn can’t be happy because she knows the doctor told Shelby it would be dangerous to get pregnant. Shelby begs for her support and tells her mom that she wasn’t able to adopt because of her Type 1 Diabetes. She adds that “I’d rather have 30 minutes of wonderful, than a lifetime of nothing special.”
The next time we see Shelby it’s Jackson’s first birthday and family and friends are singing about him being “Born on the 3rd of July.” Shelby’s decided to get her hair cut to make it easier to manage and she heads off to Truvy’s to get her haircut. Her friends are there and amid the laughter, we see the bruises on Shelby’s arms, and she says offhandly those are from dialysis. Her friends are stunned that she is in such bad health that she needs a transplant, and sad that it could take a long time to get one. However, Shelby reveals that her mother is going to give her a kidney.
Shelby gets her kidney and she’s healthy for a while, but her world comes crashing down at Halloween. She almost collapses in the NICU where she works and she does collapse when she gets home. Jackson finds their son Jack wandering around the house alone and the food burning on the stove. He finds Shelby, and she is rushed to the hospital in a coma. Despite the best efforts of her family, especially her mom who never leaves her side, and the doctors, Shelby’s condition is irreversible and they remove live support.
At Shelby’s funeral, her mother holds it together until almost everyone is gone, and then she lets her rage, her sadness, and her anger flow freely. Her friends support her by making her laugh and by Annelle, who worked with Truvy, telling M’Lynn that, boy or girl, she’s going to name her child after Shelby. The movie ends with Annelle being rushed to the hospital to give birth surrounded by her friends.
Although on the surface, much of this movie is a lighthearted romp about love and female friendship, grief is woven through it from the opening scene. We first encounter grief over the loss of a dream when we find out that Shelby shouldn’t have children and we realize she and Jackson are losing their dream of having their own child. Then we encounter M’Lynn’s grief over her daughter’s decision to risk her life to have a child. It is clear from the movie that M’Lynn was the one that managed Shelby’s medical life and that she understands, perhaps better than Shelby herself, how risky it is for Shelby to have a child.
M’Lynn’s hope and grief are palpable when she is in the hospital with Shelby almost willing her to open her eyes and when Shelby dies, M’Lynn remains strong for her family, until she is left standing alone at her daughter’s graveside looking at the spray of flowers on her casket. Then her raw emotion comes out, the anger, the grief, the sadness, and the hopelessness. I found her emotional outburst so realistic. And I am so glad that they did not have M’Lynn singing to the ground in tears. Instead she raged and she cried. And she rightfully got mad when Annelle told her that Shelby was in a better place.
If you haven’t seen this 35-year-old movie, take some time to watch it. Despite a few things that are out of date like smoking indoors and asking a woman if she was going to quit her job because she was getting married, it has aged very well.