The beautiful people
“Pause it.” I told Miguel. We were on our couch watching The Last of Us. “I’ve had a realization and I need to say out loud so I don’t forget it.” Miguel acquiesced accustomed to my sporadic need to verbalize my revelations.
For those who have not been swept up in this tv show, it takes place after a zombie apocalypse. This is not typically my go-to genre - I manifest enough anxiety in my regular life, I don’t need it in my entertainment as well. However, this show has as many beautiful, heart-filling moments as it does gory, zombie brain eating chaos. I guess the ratio works for me.
Back to my realization: one of the enduring struggles for the lead actor played by Pedro Pascal (who btw made me realize I soooo have a type), is that he lost his daughter in the early hours of the zombie apocalypse (not spoiling anything here, it happens in the first episode). The majority of the show takes place 20 years later and Pedro Pascal’s character is still greatly affected by the guilt and grief felt at his daughter’s loss.
Look, I get it. I lost a kid too and it sucks.
The difference is I decided (eventually) that I wanted to heal, that I wanted to live the rest of the precious life I was given and I wanted to find happiness again – and decided this in significantly fewer than 20 years. Also, I’m not fighting funghi-infected zombies and eating expired cans of Chef Boyardee.
“Why is it that most of the time when a tv or movie character experiences deep loss, especially the loss of a child, they are forever depressed, sulking and generally unlikable? I mean its no wonder that people struggle as much as they do in grief and guilt when their main entertainment examples are so miserable!”
“That’s true” Miguel said waiting to see if my diatribe had concluded.
“You can hit play now.”
I settled back into the couch but my mind was whirring. The more I thought about it, the harder it became to think of a fictional character who had suffered the loss of a child and wasn’t miserable, an addict or taken drastic actions as a result, (Rescue Me-addict, Manchester by the Sea-addict, Gone with the Wind-divorce, Game of Thrones-becomes the mother of dragons and uses said dragons to commit mass murders….) And while that may be how some people react (minus the dragons), that is certainly not how most of the people I know who have lost a child respond. Yes, the immediate years following are dark, like deep space dark: no light, no sound, just dark. But then the healing starts and a choice is made to live, to accept the possibility of happiness. The timeline is different for everyone and we may have moments where deep space beckons, but we’re not surly, hunched over, whisper-talking shadows of ourselves plotting wholescale revenge on the world.
Of course, well-adjusted characters are rarely the leads in a story – they aren’t nearly as entertaining as whisper-talkers. I get it. However, these tragic examples are often all most people untouched by child-loss ever witness. It was certainly all I had seen before entering the epilepsy and medically-complex world. I figured if your child died then you lived forever in grief purgatory. You might as well walk around with whatever the child loss version of the scarlet letter is because you were never allowed to experience joy ever again.
This reinforced stereotype caused me an enormous amount of conflicted guilt because I inherently knew and understood in the rational recesses of my brain that deeply grieving forever was not healthy for myself or those I care about. Yet, I remained terrified of what other people might think of me if they didn’t see me constantly grieving Adelaide. Would they think that I was over it? That I had moved on? If they thought that then would they move on to? As long as I was visibly grieving then other people couldn’t forget why and they couldn’t forget her. Except there are a lot of other ways to ensure someone isn’t forgotten that don’t involve sacrificing my happiness for all of eternity.
As long as Hollywood is in the business of making money, I’m not holding my breath for some major shift out of the entertainment industry. However, I do think that means that those of us who have chosen to continue living and seek happiness alongside our grief do so visibly so that other examples can be witnessed.
It is absolutely true that certain losses leave us forever altered. But that doesn’t always mean for the worse – so many times our loved ones, their life and even their death makes us better more beautiful people. But I can’t say it nearly as well as the queen of the grieving stages herself, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
They are forged. No whisper-talking necessary. Unless there are zombies nearby, then whispering is strongly encouraged.
