Open Your Heart

Like everyone else apparently, I loved episode 3 of The Last of Us. This is the point for me where the show actually became a story, and one about people, not just situations.

But I'm surprised at how many people I know, while raving about it, seem to think that it's an unusual story. For me, this was the kind of relationship I saw every day in the almost 50-year relationship of our friends R and J; after R died earlier this year, I don't think there's been a day that J has not missed him to the point of breaking down in tears. Something that particularly struck me: they were together for so many years that, when gay marriage became legal, they did not get married (for any number of reasons). Our protagonists Bill and Frank could never legally marry; the events of the show begin in 2003, and gay marriage did not pass until 2004.

There are a lot of people in our friendship group and especially our neighborhood, though, who exhibit that kind of partnership and inspire Patrick and myself to work hard every day to prioritize our relationship and our family. (And, just like Frank admits, it's not always perfect and there are bad days as well as good days.)

So if this episode was striking to you because you are NOT seeing these kind of relationships around you, I beg of you you to put down the remote and go out in the world to find them. 

Make friends with people older than you, who have had the chance to be together for that many years, and listen to their wisdom. Make friends with interracial and intercultural couples and learn how they face their challenges. Make friends with GLBTQ+ couples, who have been together for far longer than they have been allowed to be married. Make friends with non-traditional families, whose devotion to each other can't always be seen because we're so used to looking for societal norms. Don't come back for episode 4 until you have that kind of grounding in your real life.

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And, in other thoughts about people loving each other, if you don't have a will, go out and get one. Patrick's aunt died this week, and despite having prepaid her burial niche and purchased an urn and wrote down for the funeral director the kind of flowers she wanted (white orchids), she does not have a will anywhere. And so now, the amount of problems and chaos left behind is monumental, and we're only a few days in.

You might think that, if you have a health directive, that the person you designate as your POA will be allowed to make those decisions (Spoiler alert: No, a POA expires the moment you pass away). You might think that you don't have anything to leave, which is likely not true either. You might think that you don't want to "bother" anyone with dealing with your estate, but it will the the lack of any planning and definition that will truly be the issue. If you don't know who to reach out to to do your will, or need any kind of help with it — if you are reading this I probably care about you enough that I want to help you with it, so let me know.

Bill and Frank did not need wills after they fenced off their tiny town of Lincoln, MA. You do.