Thursday, April 3, 2014

Hollywood Does Death and Grief

(from the Washington Post)


I’m angry.  I don’t want to be but the more I reflect, the unhappier I am with how the last episode of How I Met Your Mother completely failed me AND the rest of the widowed community.

[SPOLIER ALERT] How I Met Your Mother is a TV sitcom built on the premise of a goofy guy (Ted) telling his teenage kids sappy-corny stories about how he met their mother.  Buried in those archives are touching moments I’ve replayed over and over as expressions of love and devotion exactly how I think love should be.  In the lives of Lily, Marshal, Ted, Zoey, Robin and (finally) Tracy, I saw moments of Maggie and my relationship played out over and over.   By the way, when we first meet Tracy, she’s just become a widow.  [Seriously, this is a SPOILER!] Last weekend, in the final episode, after 10 years of build up, Ted and Tracy meet, fall in wonderful love, have kids and then Tracy becomes ill and dies.

[Ok, I give up.  This whole post is a spoiler.]

Ten years I watched Ted search for love. My heat sang when I watched how he and Tracy bantered in much the same ways Maggie and I used to.  They exemplified a simple, honest happiness, just the way we liked it. It should have been love ever after.

Sadly, it wasn’t.  Tracy, his new wife and mother of his children became inexplicably ill and eventually died.  Surprisingly, that’s not what cracked my teapot.  What’s upsetting is how dismissive the writers were with regard to Tracy’s illness and eventual death.  On the emotional scale of life, as we here all know, losing a spouse is a big damn deal.  Tracy and Ted were in giggly love, building their lives and then, in two blinks, she was gone.  Yet, of the hour-long finale, less than 8 seconds were dedicated to showing her in a hospital bed.  None were dedicated to her getting really sick or Ted’s unfailing devotion and support (which I know he provided because that’s just what he’d do.)  And zero (that’s 0.00) seconds were dedicated to Ted’s incredible grief.  Hollywood failed.  Completely.  Instead of taking us all on an authentic and difficult ride of elation, shock and deep sadness followed by years of rebuilding, death and the entry into widowhood was treated like a minor speed bump on the way to true happiness.  All that was and could have been was brushed aside as nearly an afterthought.  And that makes me sad.

I will have another dream-come-true relationship, one like Ted and Tracy had.  She’ll be the yin to my yang and she’ll laugh at my corny jokes and find my sarcasm entertaining.  I’ll love her quirky nature and look forward to seeing what makes her unique.  But she’ll also know that there was a major upheaval that brought us together, that there was another path I was on, a path I had no intention of leaving.  She’ll know that when we, Maggie and me, were knocked off that path, it took me many years just to get my feet underneath me again.  That path, the upheaval, and my learning to walk again is big chunk of who I am.  Only by understanding and accepting each piece of that journey will it be possible for us to join together and start our own.  Hollywood be damned.  There will be no glossing over here.

It’s funny.  Tracy (Ted’s wife) would have totally understood and been supportive had Ted been widowed.  After all, she lost her husband just a short while before meeting Ted.  Why does TV have to sell such a rich experience so short?

9 comments:

  1. Chris, Welcome back. Society in general likes to smooth over the struggles of life. If divorced or widowed -- you just go out and find some else and be happy again.

    We know the struggles and not that simple to do. We know death and what it has done to us losing someone.

    God Bless

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For those of us who found the love of our lives - another person who loved us as much as we loved and adored them, going on without them is hell on earth. The hell that one has to endure to understand. My husband died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his sleep. I went to bed a wife who adored her husband and I woke up at 3:11 a.m. a widow. I spent the first year after his death in shock. Forget that, it's been 33 months and I'm still in shock to some degree. I think of my husband every single night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up. Memories of our 16 years together flood my mind and soul 24/7. Where are you I keep asking. Why, why, why, I keep asking. My husband died and the life we shared died with him. I'm left with what? Memories, pain, sorrow, loneliness. I'm weary of family, friends, and a society that just doesn't understand and doesn't care to.

      Delete
    2. May you find peace.

      Delete
  2. Chris,
    My husband died suddenly 4 years ago, and I have been blessed to have been given another dream come true - relationship - who also is a widow. You are so spot on when you write "But she’ll also know that there was a major upheaval that brought us together, that there was another path I was on, a path I had no intention of leaving. She’ll know that when we, Maggie and me, were knocked off that path, it took me many years just to get my feet underneath me again. That path, the upheaval, and my learning to walk again is big chunk of who I am. Only by understanding and accepting each piece of that journey will it be possible for us to join together and start our own."

    I can only add, that being widowed and in another relationship is hard, being widowed in a relationship with a widow is an even bigger challenge....however; there's an understanding there like no other and it feels so good to have someone who "gets" the journey and to share the journey with and knows how to love with abandonment, as none of our tomorrows are guaranteed.

    God Bless

    ReplyDelete
  3. I will be tweeting this @JoshRadnor. Will let you know if he responds. (He responded to me once on there, so who knows.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. No one wants to see the reality of life, and death...hence the zero time focused on Ted's grief. And yet all of us probably will someday grieve for someone. And as we all know, it takes as long as it takes to get your feet back under you again. No way would that be a hit show, everyone is too focused on the "moving on /what comes next/happy ever after" after a loss.

    Anon above, I'm sorry for your loss. I used to as "why why why?" too. I changed my question to ask "why not?".
    Death is a part of life, and yes, it truly sucks that our person/spouse has died. No one knows what each day will bring, no one knows when their time is up and they move on to whatever is next. No one knows...I decided sooner or later I needed to live again in the present, I can no longer live in the past where he was. He isn't coming back, so I hold him in my heart. I'm trying to share what I have learned in this journey with those around me, most still don't get it. Someday they will truly understand.

    Good luck, Chris, and all of us who want to, in finding another dream come true relationship.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I miss your posts, Chris. I never watched HIMYM, but by your description, I would have been very disappointed in this finale, too...

    ReplyDelete
  6. As a widow who is fast approaching the second anniversary of my husband's death, I read this blog entry several times this morning. I tweeted it, liked it on Facebook, and tried to share it with my followers. Even though I've never watched "How I Met Your Mother" I have heard of it and listened on Tuesday morning to a recap on the radio. When the radio person said that the mother had died nine years earlier, and they had actually filmed the those scenes with the child actors years earlier, I gasped. It then reminded me of a show that came on a few months after my husband suddenly died that had one of the actors from Friends who had lost his wife and his boss made him go to a Grief Support Group where there were "wacky characters". A comedy. I watched part of that show one time and turned it off.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I remember that show Leslie in Little Rock commented on. I watched it a few times and found it ridiculous. I was attending a bereavement group at the time and my only comment to my daughter who was watching with me was, "It's not like that at all." TV shows that try to create comedy about grief fall short because there are some life events that have no humor. I didn't watch HIMYM, however, I understand Chris' outrage that the character's grief was not acknowledged. Why do we continue to think that writers in Hollywood want to portray authentic life scenarios? We learn over and over again that they write scripts that give the viewers the least amount of grief possible.

    ReplyDelete