eulogy

I still have a headache.

I bawled my eyes out this afternoon watching Nate Fisher's (Peter Krause) funeral. I've said this before, but I'll say it again: the quality of the writing and acting on Six Feet Under (2001-2005)--may it rest in peace--really forces me to compare it to anything you'd experience in the cinema and thus blows away that whole TV-film dichotomy of quality. I mean, it may be melodramatic (what isn't?!) and drawn out because it was a TV series, but it is so gripping as to never lose your attention, your emotional interest in (most of) the characters. Because of this, I felt like I knew Nate Fisher. I cried and cried because I felt like I was at his funeral. Not because the way it was filmed was so realistic, but the universal themes of life, love, death, and loss resonated with me, as I'm sure they resonate with almost everyone.

I couldn't watch his family members splatter the dirt onto his body (he requested that he be buried without a casket, without chemicals and embalming). That was the last way I saw my mother. Dirt thrown onto this wooden box keeping her still for all time. My last memory of her, of the life I shared with her, is of her funeral. But this is neither here nor there.

More than this, I cried and cried today because I felt like Nate Fisher was a friend.