Breaking Up

From the time Sarah was a toddler, she would get fixated on particular movies or television shows and then all of a sudden she would have enough and she never wanted to see them again. When she was really little, she loved the movie Babies, which is about four little ones from different parts of the world and their first year of life. Then for a while it was the Disney movie Cinderella. Then, The Wizard of Oz. She loved Mister Rogers for many years and was pretty obsessional about him. She also liked various cartoons like Arthur and Oswald.

We saw these movies and shows so many times during these rotations that we knew all the dialogue, and the plots, and my husband and I began to fetishize and psychoanalyze some of the characters. There was a short period where Sarah watched the cartoon Max and Ruby where we were especially open in projecting our psychodramas onto the characters. “Why does Max always have to eat his eggs before his strawberries?” our Max would complain. “Why can’t he eat what he wants?” “Ruby is doing the best she can!” I would counter. There was some tension expressed via Max and Ruby and Sarah sometimes had to shush us.

For some of these movies and shows, I felt that she was learning and teaching herself about her disability, and her development. The development in Babies from newborns to independent toddlers, which was so different from her own, perhaps informed or raised questions in Sarah’s mind about when her own development would move forward. The magical fairy godmother in Cinderella was perhaps a wish fantasy for her. The Wizard of Oz spoke to her fears of getting lost and the solution of having magical friends who helped get her home. Or maybe she just liked these movies.

Then she got into YouTube when she was in middle school, and Minecraft, and watching other people play and narrate Minecraft on YouTube. She loved a particular host named Stampy Cat, a young British guy who was fun and funny and appealed to children. Once she received an email from Stampy Cat in response to one that she and Max crafted from her, which was extremely exciting in our house. It’s still posted up next to her bed. When she died she was wearing Stampy Cat pajamas.

For some reason I really got upset when she stopped watching Arthur, which I think occured sometime after 4th Grade or maybe during 5th Grade. We used to watch a couple of episodes every day after school together, and I really got caught up in the relationships among the kids/classmates/families on the show. When she suddenly didn’t want anything to do with it anymore, I felt a real sense of loss. I tried to convince her to go back until certain plot lines were seen through, but she was clear she had no interest. She always knew her own mind.

A few days after Sarah died, I sat and watched The Wizard of Oz and some Mister Rogers again to feel close to her, and I was planning on watching Babies and some of the other things she loved too, but I never got around to it. I guess I had broken up with them too without realizing it. That makes me sad but I guess that’s natural. It doesn’t mean I have forgotten Sarah. I will never forget her.