Recently, I finished Season three of
Frankie and Grace. This Netflix series
is about two friends, Frankie, who is very free-spirited and Grace who is
uptight and focused. These two women, who
are in their early 70’s, have been thrown together as housemates by a set of
circumstances that include betrayal, divorce and the coming out of the closet
by their ex-husbands, who have, for years, been lovers. The storyline weaves through the complicated
lives of Frankie and Grace, their ex-husbands and their children. The series is laugh-out-loud funny and yet it
is often thought provoking and sometimes sad. Jane Fonda, at age 80, stars as Grace and
Lily Tomlin at 78, is Frankie. These two
actresses plus an excellent supporting cast and a strong storyline make the
series one of the most popular on Netflix.
My daughter gave me a Roku and a
subscription to Netflix for Christmas.
She suggested I watch Frankie and Grace and once I started, I binged and
made my way through 3 seasons in one week.
As I went from episode to episode, I found myself strongly relating to the
two women because, like them, I am also in my early 70’s and have lived through
crazy, sad and painful experiences. Often while I was binging on the series, I thought it should be titled, Frankie, Grace and Me.
There is an episode in the third season
where Frankie and Grace both end up on the floor suffering from intense back
pain. They can’t get up and both are trying
to be first to reach the phone by pushing, crawling and rolling over each
other. I found myself laughing so hard
that I thought I was going to fall off
the couch. Then, suddenly, everything
changed, Grace was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, upset and
crying because she didn’t want to ask for help or need help from her children. She told Frankie, a mother should be the one
helping her children, the children shouldn’t be in a situation where they have
to help their mother.
This part of the aging process is probably
difficult for most women but especially for those of us who have been very
independent. I am one of those people
who rarely asked for help, but now, after two back surgeries and two shoulder
surgeries, I find my life has changed. I
remember the first time I was made aware of this fact and also remember the
experience threw me for a loop. I was
shopping at Meijer, obviously having
difficulty reaching an item on a top shelf and
a young woman asked if she could help me. I stood there processing what had just
happened and replied, “I used to be you” meaning, I used to be the person who
said, “Can I help”. It was extremely
difficult to say yes, but I did. From
that point on, I’ve found myself increasingly saying yes to offers of
assistance and even more significant, when I need assistance, I ask for
it. Each time I’m in this kind of
situation, I feel a little piece my independent self slip away. As I watched Grace sitting there so upset, I
knew exactly what she was thinking and it was depressing.
Last night during the last episode of the
3rd season, Frankie had a small stroke and found out 10 years prior
to this small stroke, she had experienced a more significant one that went by
unnoticed. These two events, the stroke
that just occurred and the one in the past, scared her and she felt her world
turned upside down. Frankie found
herself facing her own death, it stopped her, changed her, and pulled her
down. She felt weak and was controlled
by the thought that she was vulnerable and her life could end without
warning. Frankie no longer could float
through life being her hippie, wacky self. At that moment, Frankie had a choice to make,
live a life constantly aware of impending death and being paralyzed by that
thought or choose to live a life knowing death would come, it’s inevitable, but
feeling hope and the renewed freedom to continue her journey with joy and
passion. With the help of her best
friend, Grace, Frankie chose joy, hope and passion.
The episode ended with Frankie and Grace
up in the sky, floating over the ground, carried there by a huge balloon. They stood in the balloon’s basket, laughing and
talking, and looking at the future.
Frankie told Grace that they would solve their problems and deal with
life as it hit them and then the background music became, “Who knows where the
time goes” and off they went, continuing their journey together.
I sat on the couch crying, because I know
Frankie’s fear, especially when I find myself thinking about our familial
predisposition to strokes and heart disease.
I become afraid identifying every headache as a signal for a stroke and
every case of heartburn, the beginning of a heart attack. It’s during this kind of thinking, that I
face the reality of death and it scares me.
As I sat there, watching the episode unfold, I realized that the sequence of events, the
stroke and everything related to it was overpowered by the movement of the
balloon, rising up and heading off into
the sky. Frankie and Grace had both acknowledged, we don’t know what the future
will bring but we can still soar.
At
age 72, I find that I can either continue worrying about how my life will end or
put those thoughts away and choose to live life with “gusto”. Mary Oliver’s poem, I Worried, expresses this choice with great clarity. We can sit and worry, thinking will this
happen or will that happen or we can put those thoughts away and go out in the
world and sing. I want to go through the
last years of my life singing, being free to have adventures and “wallowing” in
the love of my family. I want to be like
Frankie and Grace and soar, not knowing where life will take me, dealing with unexpected
rough weather and hoping for a soft landing with few regrets.
February 9th,
2018
