9.27.2011

Surviving the first year, with help from Buffy

When my husband died, I had no idea how I’d recover. After two years of nursing his terminal illness, our household was drained and I was just plain exhausted. As the breadwinner, I had worked full time through his illness; as the mother of a small child, I was desperately needed at home. 

Perhaps it looked to the world like I could make it. Gavin had told me, over and over, “you’re stronger than you think.” Grief was overwhelming, but I knew that would run its course in time. My therapist assured me I had all the right tools in place to build a path up out of loss, a new life, to get my mojo back. But I just wasn’t feeling it. I needed an image… a narrative… a mentor.

I also needed something to do after putting my daughter to bed. I had abandoned most hobbies (and been abandoned by most of my friends) after our long fight. My eyes hurt too much to read. I was doing all the work, in all departments: estate, job, home, self care. I needed a little time out, some escape.

And I found something passive that held tremendous healing power: the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pledged to watch all 144 episodes, seven seasons in order, that first year, as part of my self care. I swore, too, that I’d always have the essentials, red wine and dark chocolate, on hand.

I was converted to watching Buffy late in its run when a friend revealed to me that the show’s setting — a high school — had been built on top of the actual gate to hell. The blond and perky cheerleader heroine was burdened with her duty to save the world, and she did it over and over. This scenario was familiar. Duh! The entire show was ironic.

I didn’t get that when I caught my first fragments of Buffy episodes while surfing through Saturday afternoon reruns. The show’s special effects were superior to those of Dr. Who, another cult favorite I never got into, but I couldn’t understand why vampires would be marked by forehead bulges. Were they supposed to be Cro-magnons? The other characters were cute teenagers living in an idyllic suburb. I’d been a city girl and a brainiac who barely survived high school. No way could I identify with this laughable show.

When I finally surrendered, I enjoyed the last 2 seasons, action packed and subtle, postmodern to the max, while completing grad school. The legion of Buffy fans will tell you it’s a deceptive show, deep and dark at times, with real heart and occasionally, silly as all hell. Vampires — ordinary vampires and spooks in film — have always seemed to me to have as little to do with death as an amusement park. Even when the sets, costumes, and effects are “convincing,” movie monsters don’t grab me. At their best, the creatures are metaphors, unconvincing and fleshless. Death in a movie is a fake climax guided by music and lighting, when real death is blank and empty. I’ll always favor Beckett over Hitchcock and certainly over chainsaws.

The writers of Buffy don’t make any of those easy mistakes. After my experience of watching my husband die, living in the warm lap of mortality as that event approached, Buffy’s world seemed important and worthwhile. I could feel her duty, her struggle, and her fight against evil and root — with relish, like a good cheerleader — for the right side to win.

So every night, I settled on my couch with a glass of wine and opened a Netflix envelope. I spent an hour or two watching a girl younger than me kick ass, make fun of goths, and kiss boys (Yes, there is sex in Buffy. Good sex. Talk about the teenage years I never had!). I kept an eye on her friends, even the goofy ones, as they helped out, sometimes haplessly. I sat through the blood and the imaginary monsters. I made friends with ambiguous demons of all sorts, because nothing is black and white in the show; bad guys become lovers and friends break into evil. Watching Buffy is fun, but it’s rarely simple. 

Over and over, the premise of the show, its characters, its choices and even a few of its conflicts were real for me. Two events in the series spoke out to me in particular as a grieving person, and they are both about the hurt of our world.

In one episode, the partner of teen witch, Willow, is killed violently before her eyes. Slowly, grief transforms her: after losing everything, she comes to feel all the pain of humanity. Overwhelmed, her eyes turn black and she knows she must end this unbearable existence for everyone. It is loss that pushes Willow to cross over the edge — not a will to power or any desire to join with dark forces.

Like Willow, I could feel cracked open to feeling too much. I didn’t feel so much like destroying things, but then, life as a Mom grounded me and didn’t have any access to the tools of black magic. But I was awed that the story presented by Buffy’s writers isn’t the fairytale vision of what pushes evil.

At the end of season five, I felt Buffy’s relief as she sacrifices herself for her little sister and the fate of the world. This death is oblivion, which I felt strongly from contemplating my own loss. When Buffy is brought back to life, I agreed with her sadness at returning to this plagued and difficult world. She’s in a funk most of season six, performing her duties with little zeal. She just doesn’t want to be “here.”

Like me working through that first year, Buffy doesn’t find any tricks for her getting her groove back. An episode called “Once More with Feeling” suggests that living through an all-singing, all-dancing spell could break any mood at the same time as it encourages the viewer to suspend a last level of disbelief, if she had any left. In the end, Buffy and her friends save the world one last time, not without losses and costs. Good men die, an eyeball is poked out (and shows no sign of magically reappearing), and the whole town collapses into dust.

During my most difficult year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed me that everyone hurts. The world of Buffy is tough and often painful, like that of a Grimm fairytale, but I felt, as Buffy usually did, that this world is worth fighting for. There are no superheroes, although you get points for agility and teamwork, and once in a while you find a magical talisman or a talking book. By being honest about loss, Buffy gained my trust so I was able to enjoy the relief of rescue at its conclusion. By being silly and exuberant, the show kept me listening and broke down my intellectual barriers.

Watching Buffy every night required me to rest. It gave me color and excitement in the comfort of my own home, and a role model par excellence.

Most of all, my year of Buffy taught me that my imagination is probably my best and most intimate tool, and one I can’t live without.

10 comments:

Karen said...

Hi there. Unlike you, I watched all of Buffy with my husband, even getting him to come with me to a midnight sing-along showing of "Once More With Feeling." Now my husband has been dead for15 months and I go back to Buffy, Angel, Firefly (oh, do watch Firefly if you haven't), all of Joss Whedon's fabulous work, to remind myself that there are good things in life, things to enjoy... although I still find it hard to enjoy anything without wishing my husband were here to enjoy it with me. Suppose that'll always be so to some extent. But anyway, just so glad to read your post about the Slayer. Life would be much more difficult to bear without her.

Jennifer Gail said...

Beautifully written. Its amazing the things that help us get through, and the way that our perceptions change after experiencing such a huge loss. I see lessons of survival in the most odd places now... but whatever it takes to keep me going! -Jenn, ruths-road.blogspot.com

Supa Dupa Fresh said...

Karen, YES! Buffy is a reminder that the world is full of things to enjoy, even (gasp!) TV! That surprised me.

Jennifer, lessons do show up in the strangest places, if only we can listen!

Thanks for your thoughts, friends!

X

Supa

ElisaC said...

Buffy is the best TV show ever. I was referring a recent widow to your blog for inspiration, caught this post and just had to read it aloud to my husband.

Great post.

Supa Dupa Fresh said...

Elisa, thanks for your visit and your kind words, always. Very appreciate all you do for out little world of blogging. Well, maybe not so little! I appreciate the many ways you and BlogHer connect me and so many others.

Barbara Gourley said...

When my husband was sick, I turned to his dog Tip to lighten our lives. I eventually came to write a children's book from Tip's perspective that teaches moral values.

I'm now remarried and writing sequels to Tip's adventures. Amazing how little things like writing and getting caught up in TV escapism can help you heal.

Unknown said...

I would like to thank you for your blog, which I just found today. I completely agree with you about the evenings, it is the most difficult time of day for me. My husband past away 14 months ago from renal cancer, he was 36. Our daughter turns 3 in less than a week.
I have found escape in many tv series. Ones my husband and I used to watch together as well as ones that I have found on my own after endless hours of scanning thru my netflx.
Thank you for the suggestion, and thank you for your words.

Hira Animfefte said...

I've found escapism in the cop show NCIS. It's on a fairly permanent rerun rotation on channel 50 (I think that's TNT?) and I managed to get hooked. I love the characters and the witty repartee...Or at least the rapartee. There is repartee.

It's repetitive, there's a formula, and for some reason the fact that the formula is murder-of-the-week doesn't bother me. I think it's knowing that all the fake dead people are actors.

Of course, now that I've watched nearly every episode, some more than once, I'm getting bored of it. I've moved on to Burn Notice and The Big Bang Theory. And some Bones, too. There's a nice romance going on there that would have really bothered me the year after Nelson died. Now it's just, "Aw, isn't that cute?"

I must find a way to watch "Buffy." I don't have Netflix. Drats!

Hira Animfefte said...

The first TV thing I remember enjoying after Nelson's death--in fact, one of the first things I remember enjoying after Nelson's death, at all--was the World Cup. I got fairly obsessed with it, for that reason. It was so odd to feel good again, even for such a silly minor thing....

Sheri said...

I spent much of my first year as a widow watching Buffy, too, and it was very healing for me. I started watching it out of a desire to feel close to my husband because he had loved the show and I had never really watched it, then I started to really love it.

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