it's all you can do

    I'm sitting on my couch, eating bean and ham soup and watching the second season of Monk, recalling anew why I've always loved this show. Last night I saw "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School," which made me bawl at the end (just like when I watched it on TV for the first time). I just finished "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame", which is among my very favorite hours of television ever. It touches on several things that are in some way dear to me: baseball, of course; surprising, unexpected friendship; love; and grief. I think that the last may be at the heart of why Monk appeals to me so strongly--grief is the great unexplored territory of my life.
    In that last episode, Adrian Monk is investigating the death of a young woman who was involved with a professional baseball player, Scott Gregorio. (Gregorio is played by Chris Wiehl, pictured below with Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk.) They were very much in love, and Scott is desperately grieving. When he discovers that Adrian is a widower--his wife was killed seven years before--he seeks Adrian's counsel about the loss.

Scott Gregorio: I miss her so much. They say when people lose a leg, they can still feel it. That's what it feels like.
Adrian Monk: I know.
Scott: How do you just keep going? How do you keep working?
Adrian: When Trudie fell in love with me, I was a detective. I was on the street, breaking cases. So I keep working. I keep trying, to be the man she loved. That's all you can do--be the man she loved.

    That's what life is, right? Whatever mess you're going through, you try and be whatever you're supposed to be, throughout. That's the only way you can really get through it. And all these books, the "self-'help'" ones, that address "the reasons that men fall out of love and what women can do to circumvent it"? They're only so much bullshit and excuses. A man won't "fall out of love" any faster or easier than a woman would or could, if each of the partners behaves honorably and truly to themselves and each other. I think it's the lying and the "campaign promises" in the beginning, the ones that one knows one will not live up to, that make it impossible for a relationship to survive. Be the one they love.
    Just a thought.