Everwood

I have been watching the second season of Everwood for the last week or so, and I am just at the point where Andy is exploring dating Linda. Throughout the first season, I just assumed that Andy and Nina would be the love story of the second year, but that didn't pan out. I could only tape the third season because of what my teaching schedule was at the time, so this is about as far as I have been in watching the episodes.

It is hard to watch. This was Becky's favorite show the last two years of her life. Because it deals with a widower, it hit especially close to home then and it hits close to home now. We talked about the episode I just watched for hours - the Abbott family is falling apart and they had a gigantic fight. She sympathized with Rose and I with Harold, and we argued almost like it was us. I learned a lot about the way I want to parent from the discussions we had after these shows.

And yet the stuff that is the most thought provoking now is stuff we never talked about at all. In this last episode, a widow has remarried but had promised her first husband she would use his frozen sperm to have a baby, and while her new husband initially agreed to it, he finds he cannot go through with it. Ultimately she must choose between the new husband and the old husband, and she comes to realize that she must break the promise she made to her late husband. It speaks to the first thing I think every widow needs to know: there is no decision made on that side of the abyss that cannot be remade on this side. Until the moment of death, it is unfathomable what life would be like without the other. All of the discussions Becky and I had were wonderful, but it is my judgment and mine alone (with the help of those from whom I seek it) that matters now. Letting go is not the same as forgetting.

Andy is just shy of two years being widowed at this point in the series, which is reasonably close to where I am in real life, and I continue to be amazed at how authentic to my experience this show is. If you haven't seen it, this really is an amazing show.