The Guts to Live

Facing Our Greatest Privilege

“I’ve got the guts to die, what I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?” —Tennessee Williams from ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’

Half Sand Dollar - Iron Springs, Copalis, WA

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Last year I re-watched all five seasons of the HBO series, Six Feet Under beginning to end. It had been about 15 years since I had first watched the series, and after several attempts, I finally convinced My Beloved to watch it with me. Like all multi-season series, it has its weaker episodes, and a couple of story arcs which aren’t as tightly constructed as the others, but overall, the series stands up.

If you ever watched the series, you are not likely to forget the amusing escapades and often painful encounters of the Fisher family members. As well, there are probably a few opening segments that have stuck with you over the years (bachelorette party limo + street light, anyone?)

Six Feet Under is about family and death and how none of us can escape the reality of either, though we will try to. Every episode begins with a death which, in one way or another, leads us to the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home. It is within the rooms of the home, above which the Fishers live where the painful and funny stories unfold of how we try our best to live with others amongst the never-ending questions we have about ourselves.

This August it will be 20 years since the Six Feet Under series finale, “Everyone’s Waiting” first aired on the cable network. This episode is still widely regarded as one of the best season finales ever for a television series. The first time I watched it was not “live” via cable, but rather as the last episode on a DVD mailed to me in a red and white envelope sent by Netflix.

I’ll never forget watching the finale. The last minutes of the this episode impacted me in ways I had not expected. I was hit hard, emotionally, and I cried for the rest of the evening. Sure, I was going to miss the Fishers, but my guttural reaction was born from a feeling much deeper and quieter than what I could articulate immediately; a feeling that ran through my blood for a good few days after.

Throughout the show, I related a lot to Claire, the youngest of the Fisher children: her fears (mostly unfounded) that she isn’t taken seriously within the family; her poor taste in boyfriends at a young age; her interest in photography; her sensitivity and desire for connection masked by a “I’m not like you and I don’t give a shit” vibe which inevitably backfires on her. I didn’t drive a lime green hearse while I was in high school, but if I had had access to one, I probably would have.

Claire grows up and gets an office job. She trades her t-shirts and jeans for blouses and skirts. She drops the defensive sarcasm as her first, immediate response,. All good. And then, in the last six minutes we flash-forward through the rest of Claire’s life. We see her with children, reconnecting with an old love, losing members of her family, all the way until she reaches into her fragile old age. And, it’s at this point where we realize that Claire has outlived everyone in her family—her parents, her siblings, her sibling’s spouses. Everyone. Everyone was waiting for her because she was the last to arrive. Before I watched that episode, it had never occurred to me that the same could happen to me, and that, statistically speaking, it was quite possible that I, too might outlive my parents, my siblings, my siblings spouses. This realization made me ask myself whether, given a choice, I would prefer to arrange it so that I wouldn’t; so that I wouldn’t have to endure the cascade of loss.

Last week, I was texting with a friend I’ve known since we were teenagers. When we met at the age of 13, death was a bizarre, far-away concept, like mortgage insurance or estate planning. We knew the word but we didn’t have any idea what it actually meant. Since then, we have lost parents—both in my case—and are now watching our close friends lose theirs. The last two decades have been a trickle of loss, which has also been an opportunity to find strength in the unknown, and to support those we love as bearing witness to their grief. But last week, we both admitted that we’re bracing for this next decade ahead, when the losses will come faster and closer. We are fortunate when we outlive our parents, but are we as fortunate when we outlive our spouses, our siblings, our dearest friends? It takes a lot of guts to go on gracefully, and the longer you live, the truer that is.

My father died 25 years ago today. I miss him. Time only polishes the edges of the shock—there’s no way to get rid of it completely. And while it is much more difficult to believe in the notion that we are fortunate to grieve, I firmly believe that we are. The fact that I loved my father enough to miss him; that he was good enough to me that I wish I could still hug him, hear him laugh, wait for his next foray into whatever philosophical outlook he was going to dive into and hope it would save him, only to find out that, in fact, nothing outside of you can fix you. The last day I saw him, January 2, 2020, he came over to my house to wish me a Happy New Year. He gave me a copy of George Carlin’s ‘Brain Droppings.’

As another dear friend said recently, “They are only dead when you stop talking about them.”

In one episode of Six Fix Under a character asks Nate Fisher, ”Why do people have to die?” to which he replies, “To make life worth living.” That is our privilege and greatest challenge as those who remain here: to make our short, sweet lives worth living.

I’m up for it. Are you?

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Thank you for reading.

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