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.
