Magic TV: Buffy Finds Her Mother Dead

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

It is traumatising enough to lose a loved one but when you are the one that finds them dead, it is an experience that never ever leaves you. I won’t say it will haunt you for the rest of your life but you will consciously and subconsciously go over it in your head forever trying to make sense of it.

In a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, death is a constant but it is a different kind of death. Usually deaths in Sunnydale are at the hands or claws or scalpels of some supernatural force. Living like that, characters thoughts will automatically go to the supernatural explanation when they hear someone has died.

But in the fifth season episode The Body, Buffy gets a stark reminder of the realities of life and that outside the supernatural drapings, normal life goes on as it has done for centuries. Death does not discriminate and when Buffy comes home to find her mother lying on the sofa dead, her immediate thoughts are that some villain or bounty hunter has targeted the Slayer by killing one of family.

In a world where death is an almost every day occurrence, the realisation of a normal death is an oddity.

Buffy comes home and calls for her mother before realising she is prone on the sofa. You can see the adult Buffy revert to the child Buffy when the word “Mom” becomes “Mummy”. Joyce has raised her daughters alone since their dad walked out on them so she is Buffy’s world. I remember when my parents died; it’s the shock that numbs you straight away. I remember my sister trying to get my dad to wake up. The burning tears as your head tries to reconcile what you are seeing; waiting for an ambulance, the stumbling words.

Joss Whedon wanted to do this specifically to show the impact of losing a loved one. You are just a kid again trying to conceive that your mummy or daddy has gone and will no longer be around. You need to phone people, the family just so someone else can share in this horror. Maybe they have the answer; maybe thy can give you an answer. You have no power; you have physically no power at all. You rely on the ambulance men or the police. In your head you still see them. They are going to wake up any second.

An unexplained death will throw you into a deeper limbo as it my take time to carry put that autopsy before you can take the body home in order to give your final farewell. Or the undertaker will arrive to take this corpse that hours or minutes before was laughing and talking. The would is spinning and yet it is from in time. You look at others and wonder why this is not happening to them. Why me? Why us? What do we do? What are we going to do?

Anya sums it up beautifully. She doesn’t understand what she should be doing? She’s watching the others to see what is the best thing? Should she change clothes a lot? Will they cut the body open? Why is Xander crying a lot and not speaking? How does someone go from living to dying without warning? No one can explain why? There must be something wrong a doctor may have missed. They must have an underlying condition they never knew about. We look for reasons in sudden death and take comfort that they died to go to a better place after suffering. If they die in their sleep then it is a relief they went peacefully. If it is a tragedy then we seek to lay blame.

Your loved one is now a body rather than a person. If it’s your mother, she changed your nappy and fed you as a child now you cannot do anything except stand and watch while others make them presentable for the coffin. You touch their face or hands while you are waiting and suddenly you know what cold is. This isn’t the cold of a winter’s morning; it is the cold of future days gone where you will walk alone only with the memories of your loved one. You scramble to recall every memory you can; wonder where the photos are and home videos.

But there are so many photos but not enough. Even they betray an ephemeral existence because once you find the last photo that is it. And you think I should have taken more photos and not rushed out the door. I should have rang every day; I should have texted more. Oh shit did they remember the day i snapped at them? Did I hurt them more than i thought? Did they die with that memory?

When things like this happen, people will tell you your stories. It is an attempt to make you feel you are not alone but it doesn’t help. That was their loved one; they could not possibly understand how their loss can be compared to your loss. It’s your limbo, gold gilded just for you.

It is almost like the world is spinning round you as you stand in the eye of the storm. Everyone is helping but your head is shattered into a thousand places.

You will look at this cooling body trying to think of all the sandwiches to be made and that the house needs cleaned because you know how fussy they were over the state of the house. Imagine the neighbours coming in and seeing dirty cupboards; they talk forever. Your head fills with these because it is better than imagining the moment that lid will go on the coffin forever. It is better than imaging them lying under the ground and what happens to things that are no longer alive. What if they wake up and die of suffocation because we got it all wrong. Could it be a coma from a bee sting? A puffer fish?

In the end you ask where did they go? Are they watching and proud of the choices we are making for their send off. Aw, sure they would have said, light a match and throw me out the back, they laugh. Wheel me to the graveyard in a shopping trolley. Your face creases into a smile but it is a mask as this turmoil storms behind your eyes. Others will examine how grief stricken you seem and criticise you for not wallowing 24 hour tear fests. Even then when you think you have no more tears to cry, you will break at some point. The slightest thing will trigger it and you will be overwhelmed. After that you will carry it with you forever when it will surface from time to time. 

Standing over the open grave as the coffin is lowered, your heart thuds still waiting for that spark of hope that they will tap that coffin lid or a misdiagnosis will suddenly appear reversing everything. As the family toss single flowers down the hole before handfuls of dirt are tossed in, the crowd are a dull drone in the background. Your grief is a solo trip where others will hold your hand if you let them. You are alone yet surrounded by love; it just depends if you put a wall up and keep that loving help away.

This is what happens when you lose someone you love; welcome to Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, The Body.

If you identify with this and need to talk, reach out; there is always someone there ready to listen. Watch the episode because you will see yourself in it. No matter where we are or whom we lose, grief is universal; tears are all transparent like an opens sky where our loved ones are looking down from; you hope.

Message me if you want; you’ll be helping me as much I’ll be helping you. Stay strong.