On Losing Betty White
I’ve started a “Golden Girls” post about 15 times and always abandoned it – I could never get the wording right or I always felt it was missing something, so they sit unposted in a OneDrive folder. Today, as we start 2022 and we lost our final golden girl yesterday the words spill from my fingers a little easier so I’m going to roll with it.
Glennon Doyle said it best on Instagram - “Maybe Betty just didn’t want us to be mad at 2022. What a joyful loving force. Let’s all be more like Betty”
As a teenager in the 80’s who babysat A LOT, “Golden Girls” was a regular fixture on my Saturday nights, and it was surprisingly often that Monday mornings at school featured at least one shared comment about what had happened in the previous episode. It was only when I re-watched the shows (many many times) that I fully understood why this was so impactful. They were older women who had agency, purpose and self-possession. Once you hit a ‘certain age’ you start to become invisible and these women were anything but invisible and even 30 years later, they reminded us of what we are capable of. And they reminded us of the power of friendship and honesty and that sometimes being a friend is hard.
Many years ago I watched a show about Betty White and she said that she never feared death because it would reunite her with her Love. The interviewer asked her what she would say when she got to heaven (because there was no doubt she was going to heaven) – she simply replied, “Hello Allan, I’m here.” Even 20 years ago that had me in bits for I knew that my Dad would say the very same thing when my Mum was there to meet him, “Hiya Beryl, I’m here.” We lost Dad in the fall and I know, without a shadow of a doubt that my Mum came to meet him and that they are off together having adventures - and they are both happy again. Betty’s passing (I’m on a first-name basis with her because I admire her so much and I believe we would have been friends if we had ever met) has stirred up some feelings of barely beneath the surface sadness but also lots of smiles about silly and hilarious things that were said and the knowing that even though change hurts, you can be okay.
We’ve had a lot of change over the last two years and I don’t believe we are okay…yet. So the question I’m asking myself this New Year’s Day is “What do I need to do to become okay?” How can I enter 2022 with hope, optimism and Love? I’m not a resolutions person but I’m becoming an intentions person and my intention for this year is to keep working, keep loving, keep trying and continue the active search for flow. And because I know that community and friendship are what makes things okay, I intend to always remember to attach the card that says, ‘thank you for being a friend.’
Do you have any intentions for this year?
Photo credit: NBC/Getty Images – retrieved from Southern Living Online Edition