Sadness as a Reminder of How Much They Mean to Us

Regina King, Robin Roberts and a master class on conversing about the death of a loved one.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t thought about much else this week besides Regina King. The beloved actress is reemerging into the public eye to promote her new film Shirley, two years after her son Ian, a musician and DJ, died by suicide at the age of 26. She first spoke to Harper’s Bazaar (“a smile doesn’t always mean happy”), then Jimmy Kimmel (“right now, I’m good”) and, most recently, Robin Roberts for Good Morning America (“grief is love that no has no place to go”). Each instance has stirred something in me, the same something that I think thousands, if not millions, feel when witnessing someone — especially someone with King’s gravitas and dynamism — engage with the complexities of living with grief. 

I’m less than three weeks out until my wedding. Sometimes I shock myself by my lack of nervousness or anxiety and wonder if the good fortune of being more or less even-keeled comes at the cost of feeling, really feeling, the weight of emotion. It’s a lot, getting married. There’s a lot to be frantic about as months become weeks. Is moving the entire DJ booth/soundsystem between ceremony and reception going to work or be a total disaster? Will the pin spotting on the tables give our guests severe raccoon eyes in our photos? Can I cobble together vows that accurately present our love as something interpretable? And oh God, what if I get sick? I never get sick, but what if? Or what if me writing it here and putting it out into the universe is the thing that gets me sick?

Weddings are hard when there’s someone meant to be there that can’t be. We’re past the first year since my dad’s death, so we’ve done first birthday, first wedding anniversary, first Father’s Day — all the dreaded moments where the outline of the missing form seems to pang more harshly. His absence as I get married to the love of my life is… well, it’s heartbreaking. Grief really bites you in moments like this. You look down, and you can see the giant teeth marks in your arm, then you blink and they’re gone. The marks, but not the feeling.

And then there’s the ever-present reality that someone will be missing on my wedding day: my dad. I warned our photographer in advance that if the vibe for the family photos is a little more, how shall we say, melancholic, it’s because family photos — the first big family photo after his death, especially — simply don’t hit the same when your family has a missing link. He won’t be there to walk me down the aisle. Or give a speech. Or say the kind of something that a dad like mine only tells a son like me on an occasion as emotionally unbandaged as this one. It’s going to be tough; such a big milestone in my life that my dad isn’t here to be a part of. And it’s going to be sad. Because it is sad. But now, thanks to Regina King, I can also recognize sadness as a reminder of how much my dad means to me.

What Regina King has done is created communion through her grace in sharing her story, and in doing so, commemorating the life of her son Ian. It’s about her. And it’s about Ian. And it’s about us. And it’s about our missing loved ones. It’s all of those things. 

What struck me most poignant about King’s latest sit-down was a moment toward the end. Robin Roberts asks King, inspired by Shirley Chisholm, what two words are her motto. “Hmmm,” King muses. “I don’t know that I can [pick] two words.” “I have two words for you,” Roberts interjects. “Do you?” King replies. “Ian’s mom,” Roberts says, then smiles. “That’s the first thought that came to mind,” King replies, pointing at Roberts. Roberts points back: “I know you. I *know* you.” It was the kind of moment that transcended interviewer/interviewee, and instead conveyed a much deeper, much more human connection. I don’t know how long these two have known each other, if they’re good Judy’s outside the halls of GMA, if they text on holidays or birthdays or what, but this was a moment of pure, unbridled, Nene Leakes-coined “we see each other.” It’s so hard to know how to talk about grief no matter what side of the table you sit on. Some people take solace in talking about it as a form of keeping the deceased’s memory alive. Some simply can’t. Some vacillate. Some think they can, want to, but can’t. Others don’t want to, but have it drawn out of them, and derive sanctuary from that.

We talked last week about King: her strength, her poise, her grace. It was on display again all throughout this interview, even from the conversation shift at the three-minute mark. “I’m a different person now than I was,” King states. “I understand that grief is love that has no place to go.”

It’s one of the many moments throughout this and King’s other recent media stops where I’ve nodded my head in agreement.

I want to zero in on some of the ways Roberts more than rose to the occasion here in not only giving King the space to express her feelings, but also enabling a very frank and very unvarnished conversation about suicide. I have to tip my hat, then take off my hat, put on another hat and tip it once more to Roberts here. Where Kimmel offered compassion, Roberts offered warmth (both valid; one not better than the other, just different). She understood the utility of an interview like this in helping those who grapple with “why?” and “why me?”

This is the part of the conversation that couldn’t — and shouldn’t — be meme’d.

“When it comes to depression…” King begins, “People expect it to look a certain way, and they expect it to look heavy and people expect that…” At this point, King, who has placed her fingers over the pulse on her neck, closes her eyes to compose herself. The camera cuts back to Roberts, who’s beaming. “It’s okay,” Roberts plainly states. In my interpretation of the moment, Roberts smiled as an instinctual way to counterbalance King’s going inward. It read, for me, as: “I’ll hold your smile.” It nearly broke me.

Seconds later, King, re-centered, continued: “... To have to experience this and not be able to have the time to just sit with Ian’s choice, which I respect and understand… that he didn’t want to be here anymore. And that’s a hard thing for other people to receive, because they did not live our experience. They did not live Ian’s journey.”

“I think a lot of people, a lot of people, are going to appreciate you saying that it was his choice, and that you recognize that,” Roberts responded, certifying the ways in which King telling her story is going to change people’s lives. “I was so angry with God,” King begins, offering a familiar refrain for those questioning why. “Why would that weight be given to Ian? You know, all of the things that we had gone through with the therapy, psychiatrists and programs and Ian was just like, ‘I’m tired of talking, Mom.’ My favorite thing about myself is being Ian’s mom. And I can’t say that with a smile, with tears, with all of the emotion that comes with that — I can’t do that if I did not respect the journey.”

And then:

Roberts: I thought about him when you were on the stage at the Oscars because you were wearing orange. That’s his favorite color.

King: Yes!

Roberts: I remember he used to escort you. So are there moments where he was always there with you physically that… not does it trigger, but is it…

King: Oh, it’s a trigger. Oh, absolutely. Sometimes it will trigger laughter. Most times, as of recent, it triggers a smile. But sometimes the absence, his absence, is really loud.

Sometimes, a lot of guilt comes over me. When a parent loses a child, you still wonder, “What could I have done so that wouldn't have happened?” I know that I share this grief with everyone, but no one else is Ian’s mom. Only me. It’s mine. The sadness will never go away. It will always be with me. And I think I saw somewhere: “The sadness is a reminder of how much he means to me.”

We must not take for granted having folks like Anderson Cooper, Jimmy Kimmel, Robin Roberts and others who understand the power of recognizing the there-in-plain-sight-always existence of living with grief. As I walk down the aisle in just a few weeks, and as the sadness begins to well, I’ll do my best to channel Ms. King and experience the sadness as a reminder of my dad — how much he meant and will always mean to me.