Recently, I got some time off from my office duties, and baby-handling duties to binge-watch a series to its finale. Young Sheldon.
Those of you who know the Big Bang theory would need no introduction to Sheldon. Those of you who haven’t really got around to watching The Big Bang Theory, please still go ahead and watch “Young Sheldon”. I fall in between these 2 groups. I haven’t really watched all the seasons of The Big Bang Theory, as I found the humor was very repetitive. However, when I started watching Young Sheldon, I was hooked.
Everything about Young Sheldon felt very cozy. It was a show about how a brilliant mind boy was raised by a family of very different characters. All of these characters are completely opposite of the young boy. Sheldon was a young boy with a brilliant mind for science. No one from his entire family shares this enthusiasm. His father, was a laid-back sports coach, mother, a church-going religious fanatic. His twin sister was a trouble maker and his older brother was a carefree business enthusiast. His granny or Meemow was the real anchor of the home. Young Sheldon himself had many eccentricities and quicks. The mixture of all these elements created a perfect recipe to watch when your mind is really tired.
I used to watch Young Sheldon since the time I started living alone. It felt as if for those 30 mins, I was part of a family and wasn’t alone in my flat. It struck an emotional chord within me. I loved seeing these characters grow older as my life unfolded.
And then they had their finale. I felt it was one of the best finales in recent times.
It unraveled all the mysteries from the background of Sheldon. We got to see how Sheldon came to Caltech, how the FBI almost arrested him, his views on atheism, and most importantly why Sheldon knocks on any door 3 times every time. One last thing that we all wanted to know was how he dealt with the loss of his father.
That episode is so beautifully written and directed, I can’t even begin to explain. There are no gore details of the death being shown. They haven’t shown any scene of actual death. They made the audience feel the news of death as if we were Sheldon’s family members. In many movies and serials, you’d see a few scenes of the character dying, trembling with pain, panting, pinching their chest with pain but that is the art of “showing”. The real masters of storytelling will always make you “feel” more than “show”. Our brains are capable of filling the blank spaces with the required information.
So after a long time, we get to feel more than see in a show. Loved that aspect.
And as usual, it felt more painful for me as I have gone through a similar loss, the loss of my father.
Hold on> now if you haven’t yet watched the finale of Young Sheldon, please stop reading further and finish watching the remaining episodes, you blithering idiot!
And now that you are back, let us continue…
In the episode, they showed how everyone was handling the loss of George. How beautifully they showed the effect of the death of an earning man from a family. Everyone processes grief differently. For example, George the junior, started assuming the responsibility for the family. Marry tried to find solace in God and church. Missy handled it by being angry about life, and Meemaw, George Sr.’s foe for life, missed her friend.
Sheldon however was not able to understand how to cope with this loss. He knew it was irrational to mourn yet he was not able to stop thinking. He was not able to express but the pain was almost unbearable for him. In that scene, there was a part where he was constantly reminiscing on words that were left unsaid. He regretted that he didn’t say much to his Dad when he was leaving. He kept on playing that last goodbye in his mind, what he could have said. Nobody understood his pain. If you asked anyone they would say, Sheldon was close to his mother or his grandmother but hardly anyone would answer that question as with his father.
Yet he was not able to let go of various emotions that were bubbling in his mind. He kept on repeating various phrases as his father was leaving. Simple goodbye to I love you, Dad. Probably for the first time, he expressed his love explicitly. Unfortunately, after the passing of his father.
How amazing that has been portrayed because the relationship between a father and a son is always like this. Usually, the son doesn’t even appreciate his father until he’s gone. That’s exactly what happened to me. I was constantly thinking about what else I could have spoken with my father if he was alive. I never told him that I missed him or I would want to meet with him. We were all always afraid of him. This fear was out of respect and not out of threat.
But today, I feel I should have spoken with my heart, at least once in a while. Maybe I should have taken care of him the way I do now for my mother. I should have driven him to the various places he wanted to visit. I should have sponsored his travels to various pilgrimages he wished to go. I should have learned more things from him.
His death taught me an invaluable lesson – life is now. Life is fickle, live it now.
His sudden passing in the ICU of a hospital was a big shock to me and my family. Even after a decade had passed, no moment passed where I didn’t think about him. Especially after I have become a father. I constantly think about my father a lot. I wonder if I can be even half as good as a father as my father was. Will I be able to inculcate the right values and principles for my son to have a good life?
I was watching this episode where my 10-month-old baby was sleeping peacefully on my lap. After the episode was done and when I was successfully able to gulp down my emotions about my father, I wondered if my son would think about me in a similar way as I was thinking about my father.