Fly Away

Another day on the sound stages. For those of you who have never been on sound stages, they are like a time sucking vortex. You go in there and it’s daylight outside and you leave and it’s nighttime outside and you have no idea when it went dark. There are no windows to let even the smallest amount of outside daylight in. In fact, most entryways are double doored to ensure that no light gets in that way either. Today we were filming at our Brody house interior set with the Brody family characters. Consequently, they are some of my favorite actors on the show. Damian, Morena, Morgan and Claire are my favorite actors on the show to work with. Not to say that the rest aren’t lovely people and easy to work with as well, I just don’t have the comradeship with the others that I do with them. In fact, ever since Nolan’s death I have come to love Morena even more than I did last year. A lot of actors can be self-absorbed and while they might act like they care about you while at work, you would likely never hear from them out of work. The fact that Morena took the time to send us flowers when Nolan passed away to let us know she knew and was thinking about us really meant a lot to both Marshall and myself.

Marshall experienced a bit of the same thing from the actors on his show. Even though he was currently working with them when he had to leave for Nolan’s passing, he did stay out of work for 6 weeks. In that duration, he only heard from a couple of the actors – Kim Delaney and Sterling Brown. Some of the others kept up with us and sent their well wishes through Marshall’s boss Steve, but only Kim and Sterling took the time to personally send their thoughts to Marshall. They are like anyone else I guess, some took their time out of their day to personally send us a note or text even though they didn’t really know what to say, while others simply pretended it didn’t happen at all.

Some days I wish I could pretend that it didn’t happen at all either. But let’s be honest, where would that get me? I sometimes think about Jenny in Forest Gump when she prays, “Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away” and wish I could pray the same thing. If I could fly away from here, maybe I could leave all my pain and hurt behind me. In reality, I know that no matter where I go, my problems will follow me there so it’s best just to confront them head on. It’s funny because Marshall and I have a friend who has a baby by a woman he’s not married to. His biggest dilemma is not being able to see his son enough because they live in separate states. He’s been complaining a lot to Marshall about this and it makes us angry that he would even think to complain to us about NOT seeing his son. Really? At least you CAN see him from time to time. We can NEVER see our son again. Nolan’s dead. Your son is alive and well. He just happens to live some distance from you. I sometimes look at these two Dads – Marshall and our friend and I compare how they are dealing with difficult situations concerning their sons and I have to say Marshall is dealing with the death of his son much better than our friend is dealing with not seeing his. I think it’s safe to say Marshall would love to be able to have the problem of not seeing his son enough as opposed to not ever being able to see him again because he’s dead. Sometimes I want to just tell my friend, “get your ass to the airport and fly down and see him! Stop complaining and do something about it.” Ugh. Before I lost my son I tolerated this time of bitching much better than I do now. I suggested to Marshall he just distance himself from this friend for a bit until our friend could sort out his problem and get into a more positive place with his situation. The hard thing is he is a great friend and was there for us when Nolan passed away but he has to understand we are not the right people to be his sounding board for this particular problem. When I’m around him and he starts in about it, I find my mind taking flight and zoning out. I stop comprehending anything he’s saying for my own self-preservation.

It’s not just with him though. I find myself doing it whenever anyone talks about death and in particular the loss of a child. It’s happened a couple of times on set that this topic has come up and I completely zone out. I know if people realized what they were saying around me, they wouldn’t say it but people just don’t think sometimes. They say inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times and places. It’s like Tifni said she hates when people say to her things like “your kids have the perfect gap between them” or “you have one of each, that’s perfect.” What she hears is, “see it’s okay Brody died because now your kids have the perfect gap between them and you have one boy and one girl.” I get it. I will feel the same way when we have other children. I know when I get pregnant again it will be weird when people ask me if it’s my first pregnancy. I won’t be able to lie to them, I will have to say no I had a son and he died. I’m just going to have to prepare myself for that. I don’t want to ever lie about Nolan’s existence even to people I don’t know. But for now, I just use the fly away method whenever conversations around me float to inappropriate places that I can’t mentally handle right now.