In the NBC family drama’s series finale, the Bravermans celebrated the life of their patriarch through baseball and laughter, something my family did last year too. The show perfectly depicted how important it is to find joy in the darkest moments of the grieving process.
NBC / Via nbc.com
It's been a week since Parenthood fans sat down to watch the Bravermans spend their last hour on television doing what they do best: grappling with life's struggles and celebrating its triumphs. While the NBC family drama's series finale was filled with a number of important moments — like Sarah (Lauren Graham) marrying Hank (Ray Romano), Amber (Mae Whitman) settling in with her new baby Zeek, Crosby (Dax Shepard) deciding to keep The Luncheonette open himself, and Max (Max Burkholder) graduating from high school, to name a few — Zeek's (Craig T. Nelson) death was arguably the most resonant of all.
Given his poor health, surgery, and hospital scares throughout the show's sixth and final season, Parenthood fans likely saw it coming, but how the writers would illustrate this end-of-life event remained to be seen until the last 10 minutes of the series. After showing Camille (Bonnie Bedelia) discover Zeek had died while sitting in his chair in their living room, there was no scene depicting an ambulance coming to the house to wheel his body away, there was no scene showing his children and grandchildren receiving the sad news, nor was there a scene of a formal funeral or memorial service in Zeek's honor.
Of course, that doesn't mean those things didn't happen, but the harsh and somber mourning process was not what viewers saw from the Bravermans. Instead, we saw the family members, standing in a circle on a baseball diamond where they spent so much of their time, spilling Zeek's ashes onto center field while Sam Beam and Rhiannon Giddens' cover of Bob Dylan's “Forever Young” (Parenthood's theme song) played in the background. After taking turns pouring out Zeek's ashes, the family runs out onto the mound and cheerfully plays a game of baseball, a passion of the Braverman family patriarch, who considered the sport a religion. There's lots of laughter and joy among Bravermans as they each takes their position, go up to bat, and run the bases. For a few moments, you forget that they're playing the game without Zeek because his presence is so strongly felt, and because there is no bitterness in the sweetness of their game.
NBC / Via Netflix
Not only that, but fans watched them pay homage to Zeek's time on Earth by carrying out his very own wishes: Earlier in Season 6, Zeek told Adam what he wanted the family to do in the event he didn't survive his surgery: “If I die, just take my ashes, you scatter them in center field at Marine Park, and you play a game of baseball over me. 'Cause I'm going out on my terms.” And the deliberate choice to show the Bravermans celebrating Zeek's life as he wanted and commemorating him by creating new, happy memories is what made the Parenthood finale so satisfying. It was a very honest look at another side of the grieving process that rarely gets depicted, but one that anyone who's lost someone has experienced.
Last year, my Great Uncle Dan died. Since he and his wife Rose never had any children of their own, he was extremely close to his sister's (my grandmother's) kids. My mom and her siblings grew up across the street from Uncle Din Din, as they called him — they ate dinner together every night and went on vacation during the summer, and he never missed a single holiday or birthday. Given the nature of their relationship, he was essentially like a surrogate grandfather to me and my cousins. Uncle Din Din is a part of every one of my childhood memories — we too ate family dinners together and went on vacation during the summer, and he never missed a single holiday or birthday of ours either.
But after a year of struggling with a weak heart, countless hospital visits, and slowly deteriorating in hospice care, Uncle Din Din's 91-year-old body finally failed him in early January. I was making a grilled cheese sandwich in my parents' kitchen and goofing around with my sister in the middle of the night when my Grandpere called to deliver the news — and I had to be the one to wake up my mom to tell her that Din Din was gone.
via IFTTT
Sudip Das's Blog 