I Hate This Blog

Funny Things

The internet is such a funny thing. Wait, in order to explain this extremely mundane fact, I need to back up a little ...

Toni and I have begun watching Six Feet Under from the beginning - we have borrowed the season one DVS from a friend. Great show. It's a little stunning in places, I mean, I get stunned. It began, what, in the summer of 2001? I seem to remember the promo on the sides of busses when we were in NYC from the 01 Fringe.

Sure, it's typical HBO dark humor - the places network t.v. can't go, the Mob-family sit-com (Sopranos), the prison-rape sit-com (OZ) so I figured the funeral home sit-com would be much of the same. But man, maybe I am simple or something, but all the frank talk about death and mourning is really ... refreshing. And that Peter Krause is something to look at. Mmn.

Anyway, and this was something - there's the episode about the 6 year-old who shoots himself. I was only wondering if they would go there (as the kids say) and there they were. There were images in that episode I never want to see again. Watching David scrub the boys fingernails was one thing. Watching him tie to boy's sneaker was another. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it has haunted me ever since.

Later, Nate is having another argument with Billy (I really hate Billy) this time over the significance of child death in society, and our inability to deal with it, and Brenda begins to quote my play.

Okay, she wasn't quoting my play, she was quoting whatever it is I quote in my play.

"Someone who loses a parent is an orphan, someone who loses a spouse is a widow or a widower. There is not word for the parent of a dead child."

I say in my play that "I read this somewhere." It was in a book called "Finding Hope When a Child Dies." And today I wanted to know where the author of that book got it from. I Googled the last line there - and got a bunch of references to my play, of course, I use that line a lot. I also found this conversation on mothering.com from two years ago. People talking about me behind my back again.

The internet is such a funny thing.