“Downton” Season Four, Episode One and the Five Stages of Grief

(Plot Spoiler! But Not Fatal))

I have finally dealt with all the necessary stages of grief (or DABDA) relevant to Matthew’s death and now feel I may be getting ready to move on.

Believe me, it has not been easy.

Mercifully I did not have to go through this awfulness alone, as Lady Mary helped complete the difficult cycle of loss and recovery last Sunday night. However I must admit the time lapse between Mr. Crawley’s demise and my emotional letting go often was spent alone, bereft, with not one of the characters of “Downton Abbey” anywhere in sight to help me through this tortuous process. And of course not being part of the media “in crowd” I did not happen to have early access to the fourth season prior to its American debut broadcast and thus had to wait months and months for the first episode, like any other Masterpiece plebe who was not a member of royalty. Oh, how the time did crawl (no pun on Mathew’s family).

Because of the depth of my suffering during the interminable interim, I felt compelled to write down my thoughts as a kind of very personal internet journal to try and help deal with the intensity of feelings I experienced, put them behind me as it were. It all started of course with the vicious, savage, totally uncalled for way in which the series dispensed with Matthew- did that event really have to be so messy? So completely untimely? So very bizarre in the way they left him on the side of the road, all crumpled up like that, his natty clothes ruined, his head in tatters? All because he decided to leave the show? Disgusting! Even O’Brien didn’t get this kind of rough treatment as we were to learn. Ugh, the sheer shock of the accident instantly catapulted me into a miasma of fierce denial, as you may well understand. When I finally regained my senses and a modicum of composure, I realized there was no way Lazarus was ever gonna be raised from that bucolic English countryside, particularly at a time when there were no rules of the road and not many people were trained in the administration of CPR, that is, if anyone even happened to pass by that patch of greenery in the nick of time. Needless to say I was majorly pissed off. Why him? Why now? What did I do to deserve this? And that’s when the bargaining began in earnest. Perhaps Matthew really wasn’t dead. Maybe they could bring him back with some miracle of neuro-scientific research- in its infancy though that medical field be at that time- or perhaps through cryogenics as Walt Disney had so hoped for, or some other early nineteenth century crackpot idea of pseudo-science. Didn’t he once learn to walk again, rather speedily in fact, after being paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a mysterious war injury? With time naturally I came to acknowledge that dead was different from romantically paralyzed-  with two women still vying for you to boot. Right after that dark realization the depression set in, and I was spiritually immobile for months. I tried not to think about it but it was hopeless- the slightest thing could set me off: a blurb on the PBS website about the series; a glimpse at one of the DVD covers as I browsed for a movie at Barnes and Noble. I often found myself fighting back the tears.

Then last Sunday night, just being witness to the extraordinary strength and fortitude with which Lady Mary finally conquered her semi-somnabulent state of favoring dark, subtly glittery dresses and staring bleakly into mirrors- as she slowly woke up with a little prodding from the spritely ex-chauffer and began to worry about the “crops” and “livestock” as granny put it, and other weird, vaguely agricultural problems that beset holders of vast country estates- I knew I had reached a state of welcome acceptance! It was a long time coming but it was over now and I would be able to get on with my life, and with the series. It’s true, I had to imbibe the entire new, almost two hour episode on my rather small bedroom TV as the emotional strain of it all forced me to lie down, lest I fall into a faint, or start dropping things like Mrs. Patmore, or begin lending funds I’d surely never see again to unemployed butlers, or rehabilitating song and dance men stuck in workhouses, or risk getting arrested at rowdy dances, or hiring totally unsuitable, evil lady’s maids or sadistic nannies, or, or, or. . . . heaven knows what!

I shudder to think what could happen if one does not exercise complete caution amid such lush, spectacular settings- each tableau so exquisitely framed- and I can hardly wait to find out.

January, 2014