Are you a fan of Desperate Housewives?
It is the one show I regularly watch. FYI, we started watching it, by accident, with the first episode. It came on after Extreme Home Makeover the sunday after we moved to the DFW area, away from our family and friends. My hubby and I were in our temporary housing waiting for our home to be ready and we were enjoying some tv time that night watching the show we watched regularly. We didn't change the channel quickly enough, I guess, and we witnessed the first few minutes of the new series and were hooked from there.
If you're not already aware, the series began, quite literally in the first few seconds, with someone committing suicide. This someone has narrated the entire series since. This must be the 7th season I guess because we've been here for 7 years now.
The series is coming to an end after 5 more episodes.
Yet this is not why I cried my eyes out this past Sunday.
The series is certainly a guilty pleasure and not at all wholesome - I wouldn't let my kids watch it or have it on in the background when they're awake - and yet that's not why I cried either.
I'm extremely empathetic. I enjoy that quality in mie and yet it causes mie to do things like cry for 20 minutes - big, heaving sobs - in response to a dramatized television show.
In this case it was in response to the murder of one of the housewives' husbands. That happened 2 episodes ago. Sunday's episode followed the housewives as they prepared for and then attended his funeral. As you can imagine, they remembered times when he positively affected their lives. And the episode ended with his funeral service and burial (and then a brief moment when the housewives vowed to support their friend who just lost her husband - not the first husband to suffer tragically on that show, might I add).
It stirred something in mie that I'd buried. Like most I don't often think about death unless confronted with it, even though my husband works in a dangerous job and even though one of his coworkers was very nearly killed (i.e., shot in the jaw) a few weeks ago in a spot my husband is in frequently - it very much could have been him. I don't often think about what it would be like to have to go through that. I'm fortunate enough to still have my parents around and though I do think about the fact that someday they won't be around I don't dwell on it.
And then there is the fact that my life too is not guaranteed. I don't think about that often either but it is true that God may recall my life at any point in time.
My empathetic nature wouldn't let mie pass this opportunity to think about these things. What would it be like if I got the call that a sibling, or my parent, or my husband had passed somehow. How would that affect mie? How would that affect my children? And then of course - what would it be like if I were the one gone?
I couldn't ignore the fact that, like on the show, something like that could happen at any moment. I sobbed as I saw a wife mourning her husband, a friend mourning a friend (something I've done somewhat recently), a son mourning a father, etc.
And I cried. Hard.
I called my hubby in from the living room to comfort mie. I really needed comforting. Thankfully he didn't laugh at mie and I think to a degree he was moved to tears a bit as well. I know he could tell it affected mie deeply.
And it did.
I've gone through periods of my life where I've had to put up a wall a bit to prevent myself from overwhelming emotion. Psychological principles tell us we all do that from time to time. Nevertheless, I'm extremely grateful for the times where I am allowed to feel deeply. I'm reminded of the gift of life and all that is wrapped within.
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