My weekend largely consisted of sweaty naps, medicine, bath-taking and garlicky socks. I am definitely on the mend but not better yet. I went to work this morning only to find that the leap from sleeping all day to teaching kids was too much, too soon. I came home around 11.
The one thing I "did" this weekend. I made a point of finishing off season 4 of Downton Abbey.
Yes, I am one of THOSE people. I love this show, and could definitely come up with several reasons to give you regarding why. However,as it is my intention to write a shortish post today, I will only give you one.
It's been called a bit soap-operay, and I'm not saying that it doesn't have it's moments.
(Though if it is a soap opera, the drama is decidedly different than that of most others, with problems like...."Carson, we have no first footman tonight, however shall we muddle through!?!?"....)
However, despite those silly white-wine crises, I really like the realness of this show, portrayed by beautifully human characters in a gorgeous time and place in which I would love to live.
The characters MAKE IT: the characters, the dynamics between them, and the way the relationships shift and develop throughout some of the most significants events in recent Western history.
Here's how you know you have good characters.
The writer's killed two of my favorite ones and I was so mad. I cried. I almost stopped watching altogether.
I did stop for about eight months.
However, in my recent revival of watching, I've stopped being mad because I realized something.
I am impressed by writers and actors who can create characters that I am so invested in, and even more by the way the makers of Downton Abbey address tragedy and grief on the show.
Because death is a real-life problem. Always has been, always will be. And the problem of HOW.
How do you carry on in the face of more certain loss, once loss has already broken your heart once?
It's something that most shows don't really address in a believable way. As someone who has been doing some serious grieving in the past year, I can watch this show and see and understand the care that has been given to doing a good job of conveying that process.
You can see the heartbreak, the rearranging (strengthening or breakdown) of relationships between friends and family, the impact on choices.
You also see healing happen. It's not a fast thing. It's an, at first, impossible thing that becomes possible only via baby steps. It's impossible until you look around in a room of smiling people one day and can notice the abscence in the room without it breaking your heart. It's never the same, nothing fills the void, but new things come.
I think about the great houses like Highcliffe Castle (the estate where Downton is filmed) and I think that, for those who live there today, the house is a monument to great grief as well as great recovery. It is a legacy of all humanity, in fact, which is represented well by these so many great houses and by "Downton Abbey" which tells part of that story.
This is what I think is so well-captured in this British television series: our ability to undergo great tragedy, and yet, as the British are so good proclaiming, "Carry on."
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