Three Things The Golden Girls Taught Me About Grief
“Picture it. Sicily.”
It’s amazing how four fictional woman have impacted my life.
The Golden Girls — the show that used to be my personal escape-of-choice from the pain of losing a close-knit friendship — has morphed into one of my favorite portrayals of death, divorce, and diagnosis — the losses so many of us face across our lifetimes.
I love finding grief vignettes in the everyday! So when I celebrated the tenth episode of my podcast, I made it special by focusing solely on The Golden Girls — a show that has not only made me laugh until I cry… it’s informed and reframed my perspective on grief.
Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia were witty, smart, caring, and resourceful when it came to loss — sometimes cracking jokes, sometimes sitting together over coffee or cheesecake, sometimes telling stories about the past. Through the myriad of ways they coped with the losses they faced on the show, they taught each other (and their viewers!) three heartwarming truths about facing grief:
1. Death is inevitable, but we don’t have to do it alone.
What’s interesting about The Golden Girls is that death is not a “new” concept for them. Often times on sitcoms when a death happens, it’s a new or shocking event for most of the characters. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia were introduced already knowing death on a personal scale, so the truths they presented were based on previous life experience.
From the very first episode, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia were quick to tell stories of their deceased husbands and within the first season all of the girls attended a funeral together, talked about Rose making up a will, and faced the very real possibility of Sophia dying.
What they taught throughout all seven seasons of the show is that YES, death happens. Sometimes it’s expected and sometimes it’s not, but it’s a reality that all of us face. The girls also taught through their words and their actions that we do not have to face death alone. Several episode openers included a pair of the girls coming back from a funeral; they all supported each other through Blanche’s father’s death and Dorothy’s brother’s death; and many, many kitchen table cheesecake scenes included stories of friends and family who were deceased.
2. Former partners are never truly out of our lives — but we can set healthy boundaries for those relationships.
Only one character in the show comes close to appearing as often as “the nuclear four” — and that’s Dorothy’s ex-husband Stan. The Golden Girls does a wonderful job of depicting the longevity of divorce. Dorothy and Stan’s relationship isn’t just a focus of the first couple episodes. It’s a recurring point of conversation and interaction in the through all seven seasons. If Stan isn’t physically present in an episode, Dorothy or Sophia is telling a story about him or one of the girls speaks with him on the phone. This is very aligned with how divorce plays out in our real lives. Divorce is very different from death in that the people we divorce or break up with are still very much alive.
Dorothy and Stan “try on” a lot of relationships before the series finale. They hate each other up close and at a distance, they think about getting back together (and almost get married!), they sleep together, they go to therapy together, they own real estate together, they parent their kids together, and they work through an IRS audit together. Finally, at the beginning of the last season, Dorothy tells Stan their relationship seems to work best when they’re “just plain divorced.” And he agrees.
What these constant interactions teach is that it’s okay for former partners to “linger” in our lives. Often, we can’t prevent it. But we can communicate where we are and what we’re feeling so we can set healthy boundaries with them going forward.
3. Diagnosis can change how we see ourselves, but we have the power to reframe.
The average ages of The Golden Girls gave the writers of the show a golden opportunity to explore diagnosis. Menopause was a recurring them in the show, and one episode where Blanche finds out she’s “going through the change” is a deep dive in to the idea that our diagnoses have a big impact on the identities we create for ourselves.
Another episode features a bitter Dorothy refusing to get a hearing aid. Another episode shows Rose facing the possibility of contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion she received during surgery. And of course we learn from the very first episode that Sophia is living with the after-effects of a stroke — a stroke that “destroyed the part of the brain that censors what she says!”
What The Golden Girls does (and does beautifully) is shows that it’s normal and natural to be emotionally affected by a diagnosis you receive. We all see ourselves in very specific ways… and we all have a desire to be young and healthy. But our changing and aging bodies don’t hold up flawlessly with time. Diagnosis definitely alters our identities but we have to power to reframe and recalibrate those identities to include our diagnoses as well.
TV shows are a fascinating mirror for our personal griefs, and I so love what The Golden Girls has to say about death, divorce, and diagnosis. The girls’s coping mechanisms might not be perfect (binge eating late at night, isolating, taking it out on each other…), but their relationships with each other are strong and their support of each other is genuine.
I’m interested to know, what fictional works have influenced how you see grief and loss? What characters are your greatest teachers?
If you want the full backstory on exactly HOW The Golden Girls entered my life (I assure you, every GG fan has one of these stories!), you can listen to episode ten of Coming Back, called Grief On The Golden Girls, here.
Shelby Forsythia is the host of the podcast Coming Back: Conversations on life after loss where she tells the truth about life after death, divorce, diagnosis, and more. www.shelbyforsythia.com.
