Glee-less

Holy shit. I’ve watched Glee from the beginning and was just as shocked as everyone else when Cory Monteith passed away. It was so tragic and sad. In the end, I didn’t lose sleep over it or anything, it was just a really sad unfortunate story.

I was going to watch the tribute episode when the kids were asleep so if i got upset, it wouldn’t have the added drama of keeping them distracted and entertained. But I also didn’t want the episode to be ruined by all the media and stories and comments about it.

I set my kid up this morning with some new Target loot and turned it on. Afterall, i’m a grown up and it’s just a TV show, right?

I was crying within the first five minutes, and sobbing by the time it ended.

Between nose-blowing, i was fielding questions from my 3 year old like, “Why is she sniffing so much?” “Why is he doing that?” and trying to hide my own snot and tears.

It’s my own fault, really. I know better. My best friend from high school passed away this year. Our whole lives were high school, marching band, and whatever sad social life we thought we had. Just because we got older didn’t mean our history wasn’t as meaningful to who we are now. It’s not easy losing people around you. Death is something that isn’t quite understood unless you have dealt with it. The show did such a great job putting into words the emotions someone goes through. The finality of it all is surreal and almost indescribable.

My dad died when i was 25. It was as sudden as sudden gets when someone is living past a quadruple-bypass, has congestive heart failure, diabetes, and a sedentary lifestyle and is simultaneously in denial about all of it. I guess because he was, we all were. I was closest to him when I became an adult since he was in and out of my life as a kid. Death, whether it’s foreseen or sudden, is no less final. It’s not something you can prepare for. It’s not something that can be explained. You just have to get through it.

While this show is just that; entertainment via a TV show, the emotions those actors are portraying are real. Those human beings interacted with each other on a daily basis for time far exceeding a normal business day. They portrayed high school friends on television, but they were working colleagues. Most of whom shared what must have been a once in a lifetime experience of a hit show as their first break in ‘the business’. None of that is light and fluffy.

To watch those emotions play out over such a public arena is equally sad. I was bawling not for this character that ‘died’ or for the tragic loss of someone to a terrible addiction. I cried because it reminded me of what that loss feels like. My heart remembers the gravity of that kind of loss. My father died when I was an age where everything was still new to me.  Independence. Appreciation. I lost my friend after we had been through all our best times together. I watched my husband lose his father almost four years ago. Loss is something you can move past, but it’s also something that can drag you back down and inside yourself when you least expect it.

So i’m saying grief sucks balls.