#dang son

Until I got to the part where it's explained that he created the Yin Tiger Tally and after he used it once he was like: "shit, was this a mistake?"

So, I was delayed in watching the finale because I actually wanted to watch it with my own Dad, but AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

😭

Damn, damn, damn, DAMN DAAAAAAAAMN!! So, that Funeral episode hit and it hit hard. (Did they really HAVE TO HAVE AN OPEN CASKET FOR THE LOVE OF GOD...ughughughughugh) The writing for that episode was the crème de la crème, and I think is the cathartic thematic climax of this series. The final episode was necessary for transitioning between YS and TBBT, which brings both stories together, but as far as the story YS was telling, Funeral was the show's end. It isn't a perfect ending and it wasn't a pretty ending, and in fact is quite devastating in so many ways, but it is truthful to Sheldon's journey, and to the human experience.

When Sheldon got up in front of the church to say a few words, playing out the scenario as he wished he had done it, that was the moment. The whole episode is Sheldon processing his grief - imperfect and messy as he has literally no tools or precedent to fall back on - as he replays his father leaving that fateful day over and over, tweaking it each time to make it "better". With a young man with an eidetic memory and a compulsive need for his reality to be orderly (and the fact that he believes in the Many-Worlds Interpretation), this would make sense. He begins be utilizing Star Trek (Spock's death) to filter it and provide context, but that no longer proves sufficient to the crushing and terrible emotions of what he is experiencing. That was a tool he used for when he was a boy, but now he has been thrust into the world of manhood in absolutely the worst way possible. What is it that will speak truest to what he is going through than the bare naked truth?

"I've been thinking a lot about the last moments I had with my Dad. It was morning and he was leaving for work. He said "See y'all later." And I said nothing. I regret that. I could have said bye. Or asked him for a ride. Or told him that I loved him, but I didn't. I barely noticed that he left. So many times that I didn't notice my father, I hope he knew how much I loved him."

From the audience's perspective we have been watching Sheldon play the scenario many times through his mind, and to have the rug pulled out from under us at this moment of all moments, to see that this too was only just a scenario (played out by Sheldon Prime), is exactly what it is like living in this world, enduring this life - not just for Sheldon but for all of us. In one of my previous posts I mentioned how I loved Sheldon Cooper's story because of what he could teach us. This episode encapsulates it in total. He can teach us that you cannot quantify life, you can't organize it so that everything makes sense and plays out in a well-structured narrative and format, where every feeling is named and every event categorized. Life is myriad, so much richer and so much fuller and so much wilder than anything we can imagine or think up on our own. It is what makes it utterly terrifying and wretched, but it is also part of its beauty and purpose. Sheldon Cooper comes to realize this, but he is only able to have this deeper understanding after first living it. Sheldon Prime's concluding narration at the end of Funeral is Sheldon Cooper's story taken as a whole - past, present, future - the life in movement. Of course young Sheldon would not experience his father's death in its completeness. He is the midst of it. He is trying to survive it. So I love the realness of Sheldon's "imperfect" response to his father's death in the fact that he didn't respond to it. He quite literally did not process it, and instead ran away from it. It is painful, brutal, but truthful. Yet that was not the end of Sheldon Cooper's story, as we know, and I think that leaves us with hope, but it is a kind of hope that must be waited for with profound patience.

Although I myself have not gone through the loss of a parent like Sheldon has, I still have gone through devastating and traumatic life events, so I am very familiar with the inexplicable and violating nature of grief and loss. I am still processing that grief and loss, so these thoughts I am sharing with you all right now are pretty recent revelations, and quite literally me living them out in real time, so it might be a little messy...hehe.

However, I will end this by saying that none of these truths mean that life is arbitrary. It doesn't mean it makes life meaningless. Just because human endeavors cannot place life within a context that he himself can first create and then comprehend, doesn't mean that life doesn't have a context and that that context can't be understood. It just means that that context comes from a different Source, an external and eternal one (and I will say, by necessity, a paternal one, but that is a thought for another day!)

Fitting then that the episode, and Young Sheldon, should end with the recitation of the Lord's prayer:

my dearly beloved bastard man.

my big ripe avocado guy

my big sloppy waterballoon boy