Amy Lu's View

I didn’t expect Sarah Silverman to break open my heart.

Chad and I were expecting, and hoping, that we would watch an episode of her comedy series “I Love You America” as a way to unwind before going to bed. We thought we’d watch something short and funny and not too stressful.

Perhaps we should have known better. We’ve often found “I Love You America” to be thought-provoking, poignant, inspiring, and cringe-inducing. Funny, yes, but not necessarily the light entertainment we were looking for.

Still,  how could we know that the episode Chad picked as our light pre-sleep entertainment (originally aired 11/2/17) would include a segment about Sarah writing and singing a heart-wrenching song about her dead mom?

The timing did seem appropriate, though. It was recently the 18th anniversary of my mom’s death (October 22, 2000). My mom’s absence is always a thread running through my life, but milestones such as this anniversary make her death more of a conscious fact.

I’d also been thinking about my mom more than usual lately because of the recent death of one of her friends. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the funeral in my “hometown” (at least where I went to high school, I grew up in the country, not even an actual town) so got to reconnect with dear old friends and visit my old stomping grounds.

I even drove by the house where I grew up.  I didn’t stop (didn’t want to scare the people currently living there), but I think this was the first time I’ve been by childhood/young adult home without sobbing. Maybe I did’t cry, because, to quote another song, “I’m finally getting over the sad part of yesterday” (from “Angry Words” by Willy Porter). Or maybe because the house looks so different now, much snazzier than it’s final days of being a Luedtke homestead.

I also made a quick stop at the cemetery where my parents are buried, which is only about a mile from the ancestral homestead. I almost felt like I had to, even though my parents’ graves aren’t that emotionally-laden for me. I don’t think there is any part of them there, or anywhere, besides in me and those who loved them and were loved by them. If fact, I think that was the first time I’ve seen my dad’s grave. I was most stressed by the logistics of trying to find their graves, as it was chilly day and I was, of course, running late.

Um, I think mom would be annoyed that dad’s photo is bigger…

Gordon was a swell guy.

So yeah, an emotional and surreal weekend. And then, just about a week later, Sarah Silverman made me feel all kinds of primal and unexpected feels with her song, “Somebody Broke Her.”

You can watch the segment, and hear the song, (and DAMN, Sarah Silverman actually does an awesome job singing!) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNejAln3xDw/.

I’m a little sad that no one has posted the lyrics to this song, but there is no way I’m up to watching it again in the near future. So I’m just going to rely on my memory. In a way that’s good, because I didn’t want to get too lost in applying the lyrics literally to my mom’s life. I’m sure my mom was very different than Sarah Silverman’s and our experiences of loss are very different, but the song felt achingly true.

What really affected me and felt like “TRUTH” was Sarah singing about having strength because of her mom’s vulnerability. Because somebody broke Sarah’s mom, Sarah got stronger.

Hearing this song made me think of yet another song, “Killing Me Softly.” Sarah was “strumming my pain with her fingers, singing my life with her words…Killing me softly with her song” (those lyrics are widely available on the internet, I just changed gender).

I don’t know what this all means…I miss my mom. I miss my childhood home. I wish my mom had experienced a happier, easier life, and I’m thankful for all the gifts she gave me. I sometimes feel quite broken and wonder if I should face that more, but I’m mostly thankful for the strength, real of faked, that gets me through everything from grief to self-doubt to a lack of vegetarian options when I’m eating out.