Caution - Six Feet Under spoiler alert - If you don’t want to know, don’t read
Dear Reader, I wish to be frank with you . . . death sucks. Of course I only know this second hand, not first. But I believe it is some type of perverted fact that we, as humans, have foreknowledge of our deaths. I am not speaking specifically but generally. I don’t know when it is going to happen; just that it’s going to happen and—this sucks.
Now that you know this little fact from me, I am free to tell you that I am a perverted human being as I think that death sucks and yet I watch Six Feet Under every weekend. I look forward to it. Plan for it. Turn off the phone for it. Stop my life for it and all the time cringe as one person after another bites the dust. Even more perverted, I sit there often and remember watching my mother, very young, die and (for good or bad) mourn all over again. Yet, I do not relish pain (emotional or physical) so why inflict it upon myself every week? Why? I ask you, dear reader, Why????
Finally a happy episode. Watching this show I have felt repeated anguish as I watch people die; my favorite characters keel over, family feuds, self-abuse, drug abuse, abusive relationships, David being kidnapped, mugged and almost killed—certainly an episode about molestation in all its forms. I have survived their broken marriages, relationships, hate, love, loss and despair and tonight . . . what the fuck? There wasn’t a death at the beginning but a birth. A happy ending. Wow. And then, just as the family is gathered, problems resolved, new roads forged who should show up but Nate . . . Singing. Can’t be good . . . no, no indeed. Can’t. The last fifteen minutes I watch a montage of everyone dying! Bloody everyone! First I watched a Ruth died, then Keith (the poor guy became an armored truck driver), then David, Brenda while talking to her brother Billy, Federico while on a cruse of all places and, finally, dear Clair close to a hundred years old surrounded by her art quietly in bed. They all die! I mean of course they would, being humans, but still! Christ. A happy ending and then Bam. *Sigh*
As they say about Shakespeare’s Macbeth . . . you want to know how it ends . . . they all die.
The end
"Asi es la vida" - Such is life. Death is a part of life. Addicting as some aspects may seem.
ReplyDeleteI think, in a way, we all love misery. We all want to grieve. It's a natural process. We all look for the horribly morbid in life to counter the sanity. We all need a 'reality check'.
I'm not actually a fan of "Six Feet Under". Love "CSI", "Law&Order SVU", etc though.
Having lost 2 of my own children (at the mere age of 24), I have mourned plenty. Maybe I'm too caloused by the experiences, as I am expenting another child any day now. Having not given up hope for the life knowing that it will only end in death, eventually. Just wishing that this life will last a little longer than the others.
And yet, I am watching my Grandfather die having suffered a stroke on August 8th. Real life, in itself is so much more depressing that I think television can portray. When one's heart has loved so deeply then succummed to the soul torturing agony that death inflict.
Maybe some Eastern philosophies are right to believe that "we are impermanent" and we should view life as such. But why is it that we yearn to love so much knowing that there will eventually be an end? Are we all masochists?
Six Feet Under: addictive isn't it?
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