Father Loss and the 2016 Election: Sesame Street Was There During Some Dark Days
The timeless wisdom of Sesame Street helped to create a everlasting TV tribute to my late dad.
My kids were only one and three years old when my dad died. It was sudden (a massive stroke) and shocking. In the midst of my own grief I knew I needed to find a way to talk with my daughter, the three year old, about her Papa’s death. I had traveled to my parents house with my sister and my husband was to come up with the kids for the funeral a few days later. Carly, my daughter, was obsessed with Sesame Street at the time. Before YouTube and TikTok came into our lives, there was a time when all she watched was Sesame Street. She loved those characters like they were part of our family, and indeed, it felt like they were part of our family. Someone, I can’t recall who, reminded me of Mr. Hooper’s death on Sesame Street and suggested I use the video to help Carly understand what had happened to her Papa. It was a brilliant idea that came at just the right time. I was so torn about whether to introduce the idea of heaven and what words I should use to speak the truth. Sesame Street, and this scene with Big Bird in particular, gave me the words. “He died, he’s dead.” “He’s not coming back.” We repeated these simple and heartbreaking words over and over to Carly for the next months. We talked about death for years afterwards. It was one of the conversations that set the tone of openness and honesty in our family. Eight years later I have no regrets about how we talked to the kids about my dad’s death. I remain incredibly grateful to Sesame Street for giving me the words to use when I had none.
The morning after the United States Presidential election in 2016 felt oddly similar to that day when I was at a loss for words when my dad died. I had no idea how to explain to my kids that Donald Trump was our new president. I needed to find the words to repeat, like I did when my dad died, a kind of mantra. There was so much negativity floating in the air around us in those weeks leading up to the election. We live in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC and the kids were talking about the election every day at the bus stop. Many of them were convinced, like me, that there was no way he would win. When he did, it left my kids feeling unsettled, on shaky ground. I wanted the focus to be on something positive, something within our reach. I turned to two ideals important to our family. They are two values threaded into the very fiber of Sesame Street: kindness and respect. I treated them like a prayer for myself and the world. I spoke these words to my kids. When we lashed out or got angry we would remind ourselves that kindness and respect are always the high road. Those days were tough and these simple words helped us get through. I wrote a short piece about it a couple weeks later that I posted on my blog.
Then, in the spring of 2019 I got an email from a production company out of Los Angeles and New York. They had read this particular piece I wrote after the election and they were interested in talking with me more about how Big Bird had impacted our lives. The following day as I was driving on the back roads of Maryland, trying to snake my way around the Beltway without actually getting on it, this producer called me. They were interested in my story. Could I travel to San Diego to be filmed? Sure, Carly could come. Yes, it was pretty much a sure thing that the show would be aired because it was bought by Apple. Yes, THE Apple.
The next few weeks were a whirlwind. I see-sawed back and forth between, “Wait, you read my blog?” to “OMG we are going to be on a television show!”
We didn’t find out what day Carly and I would be flying to San Diego for filming until the day before. I asked, “What do we pack?” and they responded that we should bring all solid colors, no white, no patterns and no logos. I ran up to Carly’s room and searched her drawers. Every single shirt had a swim team motto, emojis, an Adidas logo or slime stains on it. None of it would work. I remember heading to Old Navy and feeling frantic. “I need clothes for the show!” I wanted to demand as I raced in, already feeling like an actor, though I have never, not once participated in theater of any kind. Within 30 minutes I had several items for both Carly and I. I zoomed back home to shove them in a suitcase.
The next morning we arrived at Dulles Airport. I had a flight number with a confirmation, but not actual tickets so we waited in line at the counter. I must have asked myself a hundred times that morning whether this was really happening, could this be a scam, was I setting Carly up for disaster. When we finally got up to the ticket counter, the woman at the desk told us there was “no money to support the tickets.” As in, no tickets.
For several anxiety-inducing minutes, my concerns seemed to be coming to fruition. I saw panic in Carly’s eyes as she repeated, “Call them. Call them.” It was early in California; I felt bad calling and waking someone up. So, I texted. They responded immediately, asking me to “stand by”, a term I would become intimately familiar with in the following days. The response was so swift and the situation rectified so quickly that I knew immediately it was the real deal. We were going to be on TV. Off we went to security, tickets in hand.
It’s a cliche to say it was a once in a lifetime experience, but, it truly was such a special and unique event. Now that it’s been over a year since we filmed our episode of Dear…, it sometimes feels like it was a dream. The producers and crew made us feel completely at home. They were the ultimate professionals even though we were far from the type of people they were used to working with. We had never been on a set before and we were blown away by the number of people and sheer effort it takes to make a show happen. Carly even had her own “assistant” to help her between takes. On the second day of shooting we had a professional on set for hair and makeup!
The show is about how people (or characters) we admire help us get through the hard stuff in life. I have shared the Big Bird clip about Mr. Hooper’s death with many people as they try to find words to share bad news with their children. Sesame Street is a hugely valuable resource for parents to talk to their kids about other challenging subjects too, like, coronavirus, being differently abled, and racism.
For me, Dear… is a huge full circle moment. It’s a reminder that you never know what will happen when you put your work out into the world and that nothing will happen if you don’t. It’s a reminder to have the hard conversation, kids understand and soak up so much from their parents - use your power to say the words you want them to hear. And finally, it’s a reminder of my Dad. He’s been gone for eight years and now I have a very special tribute for him with this show. He bought Carly every Sesame Street DVD he could get his hands on when she was little and he would be damn proud to see her on screen honoring him in this way.
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