Why This One Scene From "Take Me Back For Christmas" Hit Home For Me

     Tonight, Hallmark Channel had the world television premiere of "Take Me Back For Christmas". The film , which stars Vanessa Lengies and Corey Sevier, is about a woman named Renee (Lengies) who after being given a Christmas bell by a mysterious woman named Cici (Kimberly-Ann Truong), wishes for her life to be different. She wakes up the next morning to find out that she is no longer married to her husband, Aaron (Sevier), that she is the CEO of her own company-and, most shocking of all, that her mother, Maria (Paula Boudreau) who had passed away a while back of an unspecified illness, is suddenly alive again. 

    As the film progresses, Renee tries to find a way to get her and Aaron back together.    She and Aaron start to bond over their shared love of cooking and ice hockey. It looks like her plan to get back together with Aaron is going to work-until she learns that she has unwittingly agreed to move to London to take over her company's new European office.  Unwilling to take the risks of a long term relationship, Aaron breaks things off with Renee again.

    It is this, however, that leads into the film's most powerful moment-and the moment that I could relate to the most. During the film's climax, Renee learns that from Cici that her wish was never meant to be permanent and that she and Aaron will still end up together after all-but she also learns that her mother will no longer be alive when she wakes up. It turns out that the real point of the wish was to give Renee a chance to have the goodbye with her mother that she never got. She goes to see her mother before her wish expires at midnight and is finally able to get the closure she never got to have.

    So why was this scene so relatable to me? I lost my father over three years ago suddenly to a heart attack. The night he passed away, I didn't go to the hospital with him partly because I was too nervous and partly because I didn't think he would pass away so soon. The next time I saw him was four days later at his funeral. I could relate to this scene because I knew what it felt like to not be able to say goodbye to a parent that has passed on. Even today, three years later, I still have dreams about my dad being alive, so Renee having the chance to spend one last time with her mother in her dream/fantasy was something that really hit home for me.

    Of course, the movie ends with Renee waking up back in the real world. Her mother is deceased again, just as Cici told her, but she and Aaron are back together. As the movie ends, the camera pans to a photograph of Renee's mother Maria with a Christmas bell right next to it.

    So there you have it. It's not every day that you can relate to a scene from a movie. Let me know, Hallmarkies. Could you relate to Renee's situation with her mother? If not, were there any other scenes in this movie that you could relate to? Let me know in the comments below.