Not Enough Time Together Pt. 1 - Missed Opportunities

 

 

There are two shows I have seen that both deal with the death of spouses, albeit in very different ways. They are very different shows that depict what it's like to lose someone you expected to spend a significant chunk of your life with, and they both say the truth in radically different ways. I am talking about Forever and Sorry For Your Loss.

Forever is a show about a married couple that is predictable and boring (like most long-term marriages), the difference being that they both still seem to still like each other. Then the unthinkable happens. The husband (a funny Fred Armisen) dies and it shocks the wife (who had been feeling some discontent). About a year later, the wife (a magnificent Maya Rudolph), also dies and meets him in the afterlife. The afterlife is a very different from what we expect. She decides to explore. During one of these explorations, she happens to watch the life of two people, and that's what I am going to talk about. 

***MASSIVE SPOILERS***

I just re-watched the episode to remind myself if it was as poignant as I remember. And my God it was. The episode is titled Andre and Sarah, named after the two main characters in that episode. It's a perfect standalone episode in the show and it showcases the true beauty and loss and pain of unfulfilled promise. It starts Jason Mitchell and Hong Chau as the titular characters - two young people who meet and it's clear they have a spark that could become a flame but they choose not to fan it because of their current situations - Andre just got out of a two year relationship while Sarah just got engaged. Now, engagements are serious but they can be broken off with a broken heart (in my opinion). Andre acknowledges the spark they have, and out comes the truth about their lives. Like I said, flames could have been fanned but they weren't. Excuses were made. Reasons were given. I get that. It's life. We sometimes fear taking the first step towards a break (especially if the to be affected party has done nothing wrong). We usually prefer the stable and the comfortable. That is the way things happen. Sarah asks for his business-card and Andre replies with brutal honesty that he likes her too much for them to keep in touch. And that is the fucking truth. Why torture yourself with what could have been?

 

They meet a few years later. This time Sarah goes to the open house that Andre is holding and they end up drinking wine and talking more. We find out that Sarah actually tracked down Andre, and that the spark is still as strong as the first time they saw. They sleep together and for them it's magical. Then Andre's wife calls and their bubble is shattered. They have a small discussion but nothing concrete. We see them a few years in the future about to have dinner together and it looks like they both made the leap and are now together, and when I saw that, I cheered for them to be honest. I was happy that love won. This illusion is quickly shattered by two teenagers smoking weed outside. Turns out Andre and Sarah began an affair, and I believe it's a long term one. Andre's phone rings and he apologises for it. They say what they saved each other's names as (Foot Doctor and Hot Wings Café). Sarah says that she hates she's getting good at lying. Andre says he cannot go back to living a boring life (echoing Maya Rudolph's character). Finally they have their serious discussion. They suggest leaving their spouses but the devil is in the details (and timelines). And, that is what makes them falter. Ties that bind. (Hong Chau's acting is spectacular here by the way). They profess their love for each other. I believe in that moment they both realised that what they currently have is the most it will ever be. This is the shows saddest moment. It truly hit me. We want so much, but we rarely allow ourselves to get it. I don't know if they still saw a few times after that but I would like to believe they did, and each time just got sadder and sadder until they both just understood that it wasn't working anymore. The spark had gone. Life had happened.

 

Finally we see Andre in the future as an old man come to look for Sarah once more, only to be told that she died. It hurt him. It hurt me. What could have been. I notice he isn't wearing a ring. Is he a widower or is he divorced. Whatever the case, he waited too long, and now, she's gone. He arranges the biscuits in a starfish shape as she would have wanted. We see it's the same house where they first met. He sits down and exhales. 

 "We missed our chance didn't we? We missed it" he says.

 

I believe that's the main point of that episode. Missed opportunities. Now, I understand it perfectly as it's something I have seen firsthand. It's a messy, messy, fucking messy thing to choose to breakaway, knowing that it in all honesty might not work out, but it gives you clarity of purpose, and you don't have this gnawing in your head and heart wondering what could have happened. Instead what you have is this feeling of fear that are you throwing away your life or you're making a mistake. But the thing is life is all about choices (with mistakes being a part of them), and in all harshness, sticking with them. And I know that people say that not making a decision is a choice, but fuck that shit. I don't believe that most things are binary, and in this world of so many fucking shades of grey, how can they possibly be, but once in a while, something comes along that is, and we are put to the test where we have to choose. 

 

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, it not an easy answer but it's often a simple one. All we can do if faced in that situation is to hope we are strong enough to choose what we believe is right for us. Might make us selfish, but we are happy in our pain.