May. 13, 2004 ~ Endings
Have you noticed all the season finales and series finales on TV lately? Last week we bid farewell to "Friends;" tonight it was good-bye to "Frasier." Somehow these good-byes make me think of another last episode, of a show that ended some six years ago. I wrote about it then. Here is that story...
The End of Murphy Brown
It had been years since I'd seen this show. In fact, I could tell you the exact day, the exact hour, that I last saw an episode of Murphy Brown. Not too long ago, as I sat at the computer, my son was in the next room watching Oprah on TV. Candice Bergen was on, discussing her show. I didn't pay much attention, at first. Yet I couldn't help but overhear, when the conversation turned to a certain episode, the one in which Murphy gave birth to her son. I felt myself drawn, almost against my will, into the next room. For the first time in years, I saw Murphy in her hospital bed, holding her newborn baby. For just a second, for one moment, I remembered the last time I'd seen a glimpse of this particular show.
My mother spent the last two months of her life in a hospital, and her final three weeks were passed in a cold, sterile ICU room. It was a place where nights and days all blended together, where the lights were always on, where patients lost track of time -- sometimes becoming so disoriented by the constant barrage to their senses that they developed what was referred to as �ICU psychosis.� This was a place of flashing lights; beeping sounds; loud, often emotionally-charged conversations; and in the case of my mother, ceaseless pain. In an effort to provide some sense of time, the nurses often turned the TV on in the patients' rooms during the daytime hours, even when the patients seemingly were unable to comprehend what was on the screen. The nurses did this out of habit, I guess, and maybe they did it for the family members who came to visit their loved ones. It was just one tiny bit of routine life, in a place where life was anything but routine.
My mother's condition was such that her doctor knew, without a doubt, that my mom would die that day. Her blood pressure was barely detectable, her heart had almost stopped beating. Everything was failing; kidneys, liver, lungs, everything. Her doctor, whom I'd come to know so well over the course of these two months, told me that there was absolutely nothing he could do for my mom other than to keep her comfortable. But was there anything he could do for me? he asked. And since he asked, I told him that yes, I would very much appreciate it if he would bend the rules and let me spend this last day at my mother's side, ignoring the restrictions about visiting hours and such. He could do this for me, he said. So there I stayed, for almost the entire day.
During this day, as usual, the nurses had the TV turned on. I ignored it mostly, and my mother had long ceased to have any discernible brain function. So the TV was nothing more than background noise. I'd occasionally look up and notice it was there, but other than that, it meant nothing to me.
My mom's condition grew steadily worse, until it was clear that she had only moments of life remaining. During those last few minutes, as my mother lay in her hospital bed, tethered to countless machines, the fictional character -- Murphy Brown -- was giving birth, in her make-believe hospital bed, on TV. And even though I wasn't actually watching it, I couldn't help but hear it happening, as my mother died.
So the connection was made; not planned, and not welcome, but there all the same. It just so happened that Murphy Brown was on TV at the moment my mother died, and the two events were somehow always connected in my memory. For years afterward, I winced when I heard anyone mention Murphy Brown, or when I saw the show listed in the TV section of the newspaper. I never watched it again.
But when I saw a few moments of that �baby� episode, it didn't even hurt. So I thought I might as well tune in for Murphy's final episode. Just to see if I could do it. I had only watched the show occasionally before my mom died, and not at all since that time, so I knew nothing about the story line or any of the characters. But I sat down and watched this final show, start to finish. Where once there would have been painful memories, there was, I'm glad to say, nothing at all. The passage of time had dulled the sharpness of the pain, and in the end, it was only a TV show. Nothing more.
Just a fictional farewell.
Goodbye, Murphy Brown.
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