It’s about 10:30 on a Sunday night and I just poured myself a tall shot glass of Gammel Dansk, a Danish bitter. As a bitter, it’s primary purpose is to help with digestion. But it is a fickle drink and depending when you have it, it either warms one’s core like mother’s milk or goes down as brutally as a cocktail of motor oil and acetone. The effect on digestion seems like rendering an opinion rather than providing assistance. And I’ve found that if I eat well, or at least modestly, it tends to taste better, regardless of the time of day. (Indeed, it can be good in the morning — just as the label actually says.)
Along with the even stronger aquavit (akvavit ), Gammel Dansk is common stuff for a toast at social gatherings. I’m not sure what draws us to drink these concoctions. They are harsh liquids. But, then again, when one is surrounded by friends, all raising a glass and deliberately making eye contact before taking a gulp, you can find everything. The bitter liquid a reminder of what pains each of us; the warm glow that follows, a reminder of what’s good and keeps us going. Or, maybe on some cellular level, our brains just have it in for our livers.
Either way, the Old Danish tasted good tonight, even though Mary’s dislike of it (and the fact that she has gone to bed) has me drinking it alone.
Mary and I were watching a “Scrubs” rerun while scarfing down some homemade veggie curry for dinner tonight. I never watched that show before it hit syndication, and in between bites of spicy cauliflower and cous cous, I realized that it’s a good show and that maybe I had missed out on some good laughs.
One of the plot lines involved a pretty woman waiting for a heart transplant. She and the doctors joked about death in her scenes, but the “serious” plot line seemed to be about pregnant woman with a heart problem. Her husband was faced with a choice between saving his wife or his baby. Fortunately, as sitcoms are prone to do, they ended up ok – mother, child and father all alive and kicking.
Then, they transitioned into the pretty woman’s room. She was dying – the doctor doing chest compressions, the erratic beeping from the machines – and that stopped the main scrub in his tracks. Then, with a quick change in scenery, she was up and about in a red gown, singing like she was in a Broadway show. Earlier, she said this is how she hoped death would be and apparently this was the main scrubs imagination at work as he watched her die. To avoid being trite or melodramatic, the writers scripted the song so that cast was like a chorus, coming in and out of spotlights, as she continued to sing and walk off camera. Once off camera, they cut back to the hospital bed. The machines now held that steady, no pulse tone and the doctor said, “She’s gone now.”
And I was crying, but not because the characters were so damn lovable that I felt their loss. Instead, I was right back in the hospital with my mom and sister as we sat with my dad and held his hands as he slowly passed away on a sunny Sunday back in April. His birthday was two days ago, on October 10, and I thought I had managed to get those emotions under some control. But, just as I underestimated “Scrubs”, I blew it with grief, too.
Grief, I’m learning, waits under the surface until it finds a way out, even if that way out is triggered by a sitcom. Which actually reminds of something my grandmother used to say about farting, “It’s better to let it out and bear the shame than hold it in and bear the pain.” Thanks Gram, bet you never thought I’d find a little wisdom in a fart joke.
