- What does Buffy the Vampire Slayer
have to teach us about grief?
Turns out quite a bit.
Mended Light!
(upbeat jazz music)
(audience cheering)
Back in the late 90s to early aughts
Buffy the Vampire Slayer used horror movie tropes
to explore real world issues for teens and young adults.
All sorts of monsters and vampires and ghosts and goblins
as metaphors for what we're going through in real life.
But its most hard hitting episode is The Body,
an episode in season five in which Buffy
finds her mother Joyce, who'd been a character
for all five seasons, dead of natural causes.
No monsters, no spooks.
Just a very real hard-hitting moment.
This episode was widely praised for its realism,
and we're gonna explore the stages of grief
and the things that Buffy and her family go through.
And we'll talk about how you can
cope with loss in a healthy way.
- Hey!
Flagon lady!
Want me to pick Dawn up from school?
- Dawn is Buffy's little sister.
- Mom?
What are you doing?
Mom?
- I should probably say trigger warning actually.
- Mom?
Mommy?
Mom, mom, mom, mom!
Mom mom mom mom mom mom.
Mom!
- Going handheld with the camera here.
Which they didn't do a lot then on TV shows.
(phone rings)
- [911 Operator] 911 emergency.
- Hello?
It's my mom, she's not breathing.
- [911 Operator] Is she conscious?
- No, I can't, she's not breathing.
- [911 Operator] Okay, I need you to give me your address.
- What?
- [911 Operator] I'm gonna send an ambulance over.
- It's 1630 Revelo.
It's a house, Revelo near Hadley.
- [911 Operator] I'm sending a unit right away.
Are you alone in the house?
- Yes.
- [911 Operator] And did you see what happened?
Did she fall?
- No, no.
I came home and...
What should I do?
- [911 Operator] Do you know how to administer CPR?
- No, I don't remember.
- [911 Operator] Okay, it's very simple.
You wanna tilt your mother's head back,
cover her mouth with yours, and breathe into her mouth.
Two ventilations.
- I know this.
I know this.
- I love the idea that she can do
all these things and she can kill
all these demons and these vampires,
but she can't remember to do CPR.
That's really real to me.
If I ever was in this situation, I've had CPR training,
but would I remember how to do it?
- Three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
- This is such brilliant and realistic acting.
- Oh god.
Are you there?
I broke something.
- [911 Operator] Hello?
- It cracked.
- [911 Operator] Is she breathing?
- No.
- [911 Operator] Paramedics should be there in a moment.
You might have cracked her ribs.
- She's so childlike right here.
- She's cold. - She's so afraid.
- She's cold she says.
- [911 Operator] The body is cold?
- No, my mom!
Should I make her warm?
- [911 Operator] No, if she's not responding to the CPR...
- And this isn't usually how Buffy is.
Buffy's usually very strong and grown up and mature, but.
- When will they be here?
- [911 Operator] They're very nearby.
- But just the...
I wasn't there, but my dad found my mom.
He got up to make her breakfast.
And then he came in to wake her up
with butterfly kisses and she was cold and he was trying
to resuscitate her and he called 911.
So this is really hard to watch because...
It's very true and very realistic to...
If you haven't watched this, this is a great show.
Don't let the title fool you.
It's a very well written, well acted, powerful show.
That's really about growing up.
Kinda like how you might've thought Harry Potter
was stupid because it's about a "boy wizard".
And then you actually get into Harry Potter
and you're like oh wow, this is amazing storytelling.
Buffy's just fantastic storytelling.
Just the sense of hopelessness,
she knows her mom's gone and now she's just in shock.
So what happens when we go into shock is the emotions
are too overwhelming to fully feel them.
So she spilled water, so that's what she's
focusing on now is cleaning up the water.
Our emotions are too overwhelming
for us to actually feel them.
- And so we detach. - Is it Glory?
- I'm waiting.
The coroner's coming.
- This is her mentor.
Giles.
When he says is it Glory.
- She's at school.
I'll go there.
- I'm not sure...
- No, no, don't.
It's too late.
- [Giles] Joyce?
- They're coming for her.
No, no we're...
- Joyce!
- We're not supposed to move the body!
- So when Buffy's in shock here,
she's kinda vacantly absentmindedly
saying I need to tell Dawn, she's at school.
I remember getting the phone call
from my dad on the day that my mom passed away.
And it had been a couple hours since he
brought her breakfast and tried to wake her up
with butterfly kisses and she was cold.
And the...
He tried to resuscitate her.
I'm sure he was panicked,
I'm sure he was very much like this.
Paramedics came.
And the police came.
And the police have a job to do which is investigate.
Because someone's dead.
From my understanding they tread softly,
they weren't insensitive because they didn't
wanna come in and treat this like a homicide
and be insensitive to someone who had just lost
his wife, but they also needed to do their jobs
and just be thorough, so police were there.
Which I'm sure was scary for my dad.
Because even if they're treading softly
he's just found his dead wife.
And.
Now the police are here to make sure it's all above board.
But he called me to tell me that she had died,
I was actually here in Utah.
They're in Arizona.
And he later told me it had been about two hours.
Police were there, ambulance were there,
so neighbors of course, we had some very dear friends
who are neighbors of ours, two of our neighbors
right by us were very very close to us,
and so they, instead of saying oh I wonder
what's going on at The Deckers and just waiting
they rushed over to see what they could do.
And then they started making calls
for things that were needed.
And my dad realized that, he's like "I better call my kids.
"Before somebody else calls them
"and says I'm so sorry, I'm here for you,
"my kids go what are you even talking about."
He says "They need to hear it from me."
And so when Buffy's vacantly saying
I need to go tell Dawn, but she's only kinda
halfway there, that's very true, that's very real.
So here's where Buffy goes to the school
to tell her sister that her mom's passed away.
- And she didn't know how to say
the word annals, so she kept saying--
- Dawn.
I have to talk to you.
- What?
Can it wait?
I'm in the middle of class.
- I know.
Please come with me.
- I thought mom was picking me up.
- "I thought mom was picking me up."
- What's going on?
Something's going on.
- Let's go outside.
- No!
Tell me what's going on.
- It's bad news.
- Well what is it?
What happened?
- [Buffy] It's bad.
Please can we--
- Where's mom?
- Mom had an accident.
Or something went wrong from the tumor.
- Is she okay?
Is she...
But she's okay.
It's serious, but--
- Dawn.
- It's an interesting choice
to go silent here and not hear it.
So I wanna talk about the reactions
that we have to news like this.
So Dawn's obviously feeling it immediately and...
Is intensely emotional.
And that was my sisters.
I had to make it home three days before Christmas.
I was actually gonna drive home Christmas day.
I was working, and so I wasn't gonna be able
to be home until, actually Christmas Eve,
I was gonna drive home Christmas Eve from Utah.
But it's three days before Christmas,
my mom dies, and I need to get home.
I told my boss at work, I'm like
my mom's dead, so I gotta go home.
And it was interesting.
I don't know why I said interesting, I don't know
if that's the word, but I didn't feel it.
I understood it rationally,
and I'm like oh, well that's really sad
and that's really terrible, but I was
much more like Buffy originally.
I was just in a daze.
I was in a daze that lasted a couple days.
But when I got home, I'll spare you
all the details, but we were able to find me
a flight three days before Christmas
because a dear family friend went to bat
making calls all day, and all the flights were booked,
and he didn't stop until he got me a ticket.
So thanks Bruce, if you're watching.
But I got home and my sisters were wailing.
My sisters were falling apart.
My father, he wasn't being stoic.
He was very much like me.
I think he had had the most terrible morning
of his life, and then after that he just
settled into this groove for a while
of I need to be here for my kids,
so I think that gave him purpose and focus
other than to just feel the grief of it
as oh I need to be here for my kids.
I'm the only parent here right now.
The reactions to loss are varied and we need
to be graceful and gracious and merciful
and understanding towards one another.
If there's a loss in your life, you may
see some family members as insensitive
if they're not reacting as strongly as you.
Or if someone's got a stronger
immediate reaction than you, let that be okay.
That's what they need, that's natural.
Honestly I was sad and I was brokenhearted,
but it was about three months after
she died when it hit me that hard.
I think I just immediately tried to go
to this place of acceptance and okay,
well this is our reality now, and so we gotta
do the funeral, and let's honor her,
and let's be here for one another,
and it's really sad and we're gonna miss her,
but life goes on, and I think I was just
stiff upper lipping it and soldiering through.
And three months later is when I wanted to call her
'cause something really funny happened.
And I realized that I couldn't call her.
And after three months, I cried
and I was sad and it was difficult,
but I just completely fell apart.
Grief is a strange animal and it affects
all of us differently and every person's
journey is valid and it's okay.
We see with Buffy and her sister
Dawn two different reactions.
Now the last thing we're gonna watch is Anya.
Anya is, she was a demon who became human.
She was a vengeance demon.
Her whole purpose was to exact
vengeance on men who had wronged women.
That was what she was all about.
And she traded her demonhood for humanity
because she fell in love with a man.
And she found family with Buffy
and her family and her friends.
But the human experience is kinda new to her.
And so this is the first time she's actually
experienced the loss of someone close to her.
And she can't quite comprehend it.
She can't quite understand what's going on.
She understands it rationally, but it's a lot to take in.
- I'm afraid I'm gonna start to cry again.
- This is Willow.
And there's Anya.
- Xander cried at the apartment.
It was weird.
- It's a thing we do.
- What's going to happen?
- Well I guess we're gonna meet them at the morgue.
That's where they were taking her.
- Are we gonna see the body?
- What?
- Are we gonna be in the room with the dead body?
- I don't know.
No?
- They think she's just being morbid
'cause she's usually morbid--
- Are they gonna cut the body open?
- But this is something else.
- Oh my god!
Would you just stop talking?
Just shut your mouth.
Please.
- What am I doing?
- How can you act like that?
- Am I supposed to be changing my clothes a lot?
Is that the helpful thing to do?
- Guys.
- The way you behave.
- Nobody will tell me.
- Because it's not okay for you to be asking these things!
- But I don't understand!
I don't understand how this all happens.
How we go through this.
I mean I knew her and then she's, there's just a body.
And I don't understand why she just can't
get back in it and not be dead anymore.
It's stupid.
It's mortal and stupid.
And Xander's crying and not talking
and I was having fruit punch and I thought
well Joyce will never have anymore fruit punch ever,
and she'll never have eggs or yawn
or brush her hair, not ever,
and no one will explain to me why.
- We don't know.
How it works.
Or why.
- We've all got a...
Sorry, I should've been offering commentary
and I just got sucked into the scene.
We all have to find our "why".
Your beliefs, your theology, your world view.
Influence that.
But there is a simple fact.
Which is once somebody's gone, whatever you think
happens after, whether you think
anything happens afterwards or not,
here and now we don't have them anymore.
The idea that she'll never have fruit punch again,
she'll never yawn or brush her hair, which is what
Anya was doing when she found out all this,
these were the things she was doing at breakfast time.
It's all these little things.
In the case of my mom, I have a hard time
that she can't be a grandma to my kids.
I have a hard time that she's not around for that.
I have a hard time that I can't
share those moments with her.
And that when I'm eating something delicious
'cause my mom, like me, was a foodie, that she
won't be able to taste that or enjoy that anymore.
And you know, the truth is if she's gone
for good and there is nothing after this,
then it doesn't really matter to her
'cause she doesn't exist anymore.
That's not what I think, I think she's still going on
and that what continues for her is even better than this.
So I'm more sad for the rest of us.
That we don't get to share our lives
and these moments with her.
We grieve best when we allow ourselves to feel it.
We grieve best when we allow ourselves
to ask the questions to which either
there are no answers, or we may have answers
that satisfy us, but it's still an act of faith.
We mourn best when we celebrate the life of the departed,
but we don't need to force ourselves to be happy.
What's so powerful about this episode called
The Body in season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
is the notion that it's okay to be sad.
No one's trying to force themselves
to be happy to get through it.
It's just devastating and it just sucks.
And another theme of the show
is to surround yourself with love.
Because that will carry you through your hardest moments.
Anyways, this has been Buffy Gets Therapized.
Not the most upbeat episode of Mended Light,
but still, hope that hit the spot for you.
Now if you feel like crying some more,
I wanna direct you to Fresh Prince Gets Therapized.
If you are dealing with grief and trauma
we've got a free resource for you
here in the comments, you can click on the link.
As always like, subscribe,
click the bell, share with your friends,
and keep shining because we need your light.
Here he is.
The big bad Fresh Prince.
In West Philadelphia, born and raised.
You know it.
You're singing it already.
That's why you're gonna click on the video
because you need your Fresh Prince fix.
Do it.