Member-only story
This Is Us
The New Year Isn’t a Fresh Start, and That’s Okay
Even when bad things happen, the past influences us for the better
Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing. —Miles Davis
Working around death and dying, I often feel different from other people—alone in a way. Very few people enjoy thinking about dying, disease, and the separation of this life from the “Let the Mystery Be,” as Iris DeMent describes it. Many people are intrigued but only in passing, as if I were a party trick. I understand the avoidance. It is a strange occupation to be with human beings for the express purpose of “helping” them die or, more often, helping their families help them die.
When I worked as a home hospice social worker, I was enamored with the HBO series Six Feet Under because, I think, when watching that show, I felt less alone. I felt that the characters — a family who owned and operated a mortuary — understood the way life and death walk side by side every moment of our lives. They shared that awareness with me, even though they were just characters on a TV show.
Seventeen years later (now a grief therapist working in private practice), I am watching the show again with my 15-year-old daughter. The last time I watched it was the early 2000s — I was nursing her older brother, and she herself was just a twinkle in my eye.
The first episode begins with the death of the family patriarch, Nathaniel Fisher Sr. — the owner of the mortuary — who is killed in a car accident. After his death, there are many scenes where he appears, interacts, influences, chides, guides, admonishes, and simply observes. He is dead — but I love how this illustrates the way people aren’t really in the past. They still impact us. We are still in relationship to them — even when their bodies are long buried. Even if we have no belief in life after death, it can’t be denied that there is some kind of life after death in that a person existed and they exert force on us in ways we are aware of and probably in ways we are not.
I’ve heard so much about leaving 2020 behind us. The terrible pandemic year in which we wore masks, in which businesses closed, in which everyone stayed home…
