What to Watch When Your Heart is Broken

If you’re around me long enough, there is a high probability the subject of death and grief will come up. My social media handle is Lady Death for god’s sake, and I’ve buried enough people that I’ve forced my remaining family into a pact that I get to die first. I think most of them are lying to me, but I’ll take it.

One of my first scripts was about the weekend my grandfather died, and the rest have featured death in some way. Taking all of that into consideration, I feel I can say that I am an expert on death and grief. I’m currently searching for a PhD program to make this official, and so there can be no arguments about my qualifications.

When you’re in the thick of grieving, you’ve just lost the love of your life, your parent or best friend, there’s a laundry list of this to take care of:

• Inform everyone. Why does this always fall on the person whose most effected? Like I just lost my mom, I really don’t have the mental capacity to let the rest of my family, her friends, and co-workers know.
• Plan the funeral. There are sub steps here … fucking funerals can never be easy.
• Deal with the accounts, cars, house … etc.
• Figure out the will … if there is one. Rare times when it’s a bonus to be an only child (if your burying your parents).
• Continue to function normally and deal with regular daily tasks.

So, you’ve gotten through the day with your grief, planned some of the funeral or picked up the urns, and now you’re sitting down with a casserole that some kind neighbor brought (hopefully someone did that for you, so you not having to cook on top of this insanity).

What the fuck are you gonna watch?

Now, if you haven’t lost someone, you might not think this is an important question, but that is where you are wrong. The same way we need comfort food when we’re grieving, we need comfort media. What you pick could mean the difference between lifting you up after the worst day of your life or finding out that there’s’ another level below rock bottom.

So, I have some simple guidelines.

1. Do not pick something serious … unless you need the cry. Sometimes a catharsis cryfest can help, but I’m going to bet you’ve already had that. Comedy will be your friend here. Save serious for music. Something you can drift in and out of as needed.

One of the few times I didn’t find comfort in TV and movies was when I was 17 and my paternal grandfather died. We were stuck at my grandparents’ house, and in my 17 years of life, I believe I had only seen their television on a grand total of five times ... and none of those times were happy ones. I wasn’t about to turn on my grandmother’s television and go searching for a comedy that would surely make a grieving woman mad. Instead, I found solace in my CD Player (it was 2005 ... and I was an emo kid). Throughout that week, I found solace in my collection of CDs and tried to find places to hide around the house. "Bleed American" by Jimmy Eat World and "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" by My Chemical Romance played on repeat. Suffice it to say I skipped right to the anger step of grief.

Meanwhile, my mom made Monty Python jokes the entire time, trying to get me to smile or laugh. When we got home … that played on repeat.

2. Don’t watch anything that has any sentimental attachment to the person who died.

The first death I ever experience was when I was eight. My other grandfather, my mother’s farther, died. The day we went to the funeral home was rough—I was dragged along because there was no one else to watch me. When we got back to my grandfather’s house, my mom and her sister sat me in my grandfather’s recliner with lunch and The Music Man planning on TV.

In that moment it felt so strange to watch the movie. I’d never watched it without my grandfather, and all in one moment, it confirmed he really was gone. Any feelings of joy I had attached to this movie immediately evaporated and were replaced with grief and sadness. The movie became a memory of what I had lost.

That was the last time I watched The Music Man.

In 2018, when my mother died, I remembered this moment. There were so many movies my mom and I loved, and because of that, I knew I had to be careful in my choice. So, I picked the Netflix Rom-Com Ibiza. I knew it would made me laugh, and that my mother had never seen it. She didn’t understand my obsession with Richard Madden, nor did she know any of the actors in the movie. It was perfectly insulated against her memory. It was the exact bit of escapism I needed that night to get me to fall asleep, which brings me to the next guideline …

3. Escapism when your grieving isn’t a bad thing.

I had this idea that if I just forced myself to get through all the stages of grief, I could move on and let go of my parents, but that’s not how grief works. It’s not a through line but a web of emotions and triggers that are really easy to get stuck in.

Sometimes you have to sit still and escape.

Those emotions and triggers are heavy burdens, and you don’t have the strength to carry them every day. Escaping into a fantasy world, a rom-com, or a comedy isn’t a bad thing. You get used to the weight of the shit you’ve been through, but you can pick it all back up when you’re strong enough.

There’s no exact science to figuring out what to watch when you’re in the thick of grief. There are no right or wrong answers. But it’s important to consider what we mentally need when our hearts are broken.

Before my dad died, the last movie we watched together was Moana. We both cried at the same part. The first movie I watched after he died was Star Wars: Rouge One. I cried my eyes out for reasons no one else did. About a year later, close to the anniversary of his death, I got a tattoo honoring him. The words “I will carry you here in my heart” surrounded by stars now sits on the inside of my left arm.

Don’t be surprised when the movies, television shows, or books you escape into help you carry the weight of your grief.

*Feature image by Cristina Conti (Adobe)