I've also been rewatching Buffy, and I confess that I skipped "The Body." My father died a little over 10 years ago, and it still reawakens too many raw emotions.

I've progressed to the season 6, "I'm so annoyed, I just want to throw things at the screen" stage.

I had to fast forward through the Buffy performing CPR scene, but I will probably watch the rest.

Maybe.

I still don't feel strong enough to rewatch, and this is me being within an hour's drive of visiting both my still-living parents. I can't even imagine how hard the episode hits someone who's lost one or both.

I made it through the whole thing with only a teensy bit of fast forwarding, but not without some tears. It was a good ending to my weekend o' wallow.

I love that episode, but it is so damn hard to watch. It's a great one for getting the tears out when you feel the need but can't otherwise perform (hee.)

The scene that really got to me was when Buffy tells Dawn what's happened, and you see Dawn collapse out side the classroom window. It makes it more heartbreaking, somehow, that you don't hear anything Buffy says.

It makes it more heartbreaking, somehow, that you don't hear anything Buffy says.

Callback to the scene where Willow and Buffy are crying after Jenny's death and you only get it from Angelus' POV, outside the window.

"The Body" was very true to my experience of my mother's death, but it's not unbearable to me. What it mostly calls up are those weird moments where death doesn't really have a social protocol in our culture, so you're fumbling around and bumping into emotional landmines and stepping on toes and acting inappropriate.

One thing I've never seen portrayed in film or TV about death is the clarity that it provides. How your daily tasks and interactions tend to bob in your face like so many balloons, and death suddenly gives each one the proper weight. And now you can see the few balloons that matter - your family, your friends, your creative work - and the bullshit things sink and all their stresses recede. For a time.

I've been rewatching, too. I'm in season 6 right now, but when I was rewatching season 5? I just holed up and cried for a few eps.

My friend, P, discovered Buffy when he DH gave her the series boxed set just before I moved up here. So I have been giddily rewatching *and* watching her see it all for the first time.

In email today, she just started S5 and my first thought, was ooooh, The Body is coming. Not soon really, but I know it is coming. From beneath you, it makes you sob like a baby.

One thing I've never seen portrayed in film or TV about death is the clarity that it provides. How your daily tasks and interactions tend to bob in your face like so many balloons, and death suddenly gives each one the proper weight. And now you can see the few balloons that matter - your family, your friends, your creative work - and the bullshit things sink and all their stresses recede. For a time.

Did your mom die before Emmett was born, Hec? I ask, because this is almost in direct opposition to my experience? Well, my day to day stuff was my family, so maybe that was the difference. And I guess stuff had its proper weight, but I was never free just to concentrate on dad dying, or on my mourning.

The kids still got sick. There was still a blizzard to deal with even though we had to get to the undertaker and the florist, and have the minister over. The kids' conjunctivitis got so bad it literally looked like snot on their eyes, but the doctor's office was closed, and he was pissy when I had him paged, because I had to have them on antibiotics, before we were around family for days. We still had to shovel. Ben had an event at school, and then his Pine Box Derby race caused us to postpone the wake and funeral by a day. We still had to get him to and from school. Scott had to take time off, so I could be at the hospital, and then so I could be with mum to make all the arrangements.

It was one of those reasons I appreciated the vampire showing up in the hospital morgue, in The Body. The shit doesn't stop, even though you feel like the world ought to stop. I'll stop now, before I go all Auden.