I watched This Is Us after the Super Bowl last night. It was the first episode I had ever watched. I was assured by a friend who had caught ten to fifteen minutes at the end of a handful of episodes that this one was significant because we’re finally going to find out how the dad dies. (This apparently isn’t a spoiler.)
The episode dealt with each family member dealing with the anniversary of the death, which occurred on Super Bowl Sunday.
As I write, I’m realizing this was a pretty forced tie in since the date of the Super Bowl is not the same each year. Super Bowl XXXII (the day the dad died) was on January 25th. Super Bowl LII was on February 4th. So, wouldn’t they remember January 25th? It’s the Super Bowl, not Easter. And as Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore) went to the hospital bed to see her husband’s dead body, there was a hashtag in the bottom left of the screen. Take the ads down so I can make with the crying.
But I digress.
As I said, each family member reckons with the anniversary of the dad’s death and it’s powerful for each of them even twenty years later.
The original title of this post was “8 Years an Orphan.” I started it in June of last year, around the eight-year anniversary of me becoming an orphan. But I didn’t finish it. I’ve just let it sit in my drafts folder since then. I didn’t have much to say about their passing. I felt more than anything that I had become used to carrying the weight of the fact that I am an orphan and that was about it.
The anniversaries of their deaths don’t mean much to me and I’m wondering if that makes me a sociopath. My mother died on December 23rd. For those of you without a calendar handy, that’s two days before Christmas. More often than not, that is the day that I travel home to Rochester for the holiday. My father died on June 16th. That means that the anniversary of his death is either on or around Father’s Day (and I remember June 16th, not Father’s Day, see how that works This Is Us writing staff?). Those two days are pretty significant and yet every year, I remain dry eyed. Why aren’t I sadder on those days? What is wrong with me?
I notice that TV usually gets the experience of losing a loved one wrong. Or maybe it’s just Hollywoodized too much. It’s not a montage of crying set to music. No one muffles a scream with their hand by a death bed. I didn’t, anyway. But as far as having a hard day when it comes to the anniversary of a death, maybe fiction has it right and I’m the wrong one.
I think I know now what I was feeling last June and it makes sense that I’m completing the thought now on a random day, the day after the Super Bowl after watching a tragedy porn television show. I was struck by how much a part of my life their death had become and how that’s an every day thing, not just two days out of the year.
