Loving, Eating, Dying
And Forgetting How To
In episode four of the second season of Fleabag, there’s a flashback to the funeral of Fleabag’s mother. We see just how broken, and vulnerable Fleabag is as she tells her best friend, Boo, that she doesn’t know what to do with the love she has for her mother now. Boo eagerly and thoughtfully obliges to take it. She volunteers to be the keeper of the love.
It’s a poignant moment coming from a mostly disastrous and slightly complicated character. And Fleabag raises a good question: Where do we put the love we have for those we have lost? Love without a home isn’t included in the stages of grief. Is the hole you feel in the throws of loss, not the absence of your loved one, but the absence of their love? It all becomes lopsided. You have nowhere to put your love for them, and you are no longer being filled with the love they have for you.
Catch and Release
I watched my mother fall victim to the ugly and shameless Alzheimer’s Disease. I watched her melt away into a puddle of a nondescript old woman. As the disease progressed in her brain, stealing away her memories and identity, her face and body also forgot who she…
