‘The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’ Producer on How She Learned to Handle Grief
10.10.2023 - 19:33
/ variety.com
J.J Duncan Two months before my son died, I went on antidepressants. He was in the throes of leukemia, and as his 11th birthday approached, I began experiencing what felt like a surge of electricity throughout my body every time he called my name. Much of the time he only needed me to hand him the remote, or his Nintendo Switch.
However, quite often he was calling out to me for a bloody nose, or nausea, or help to get to the bathroom, or he was in pain. Whatever the reason, when my boy called out “mama!,” my whole body would zap like a mosquito slamming into a bug light. I was wearing down, and I needed to keep my strength so that I could walk him through the end of his short life.
I talked to my doctor about the jolt, and was prescribed an SSRI antidepressant. Later that fall, my wife and I held our son in our arms as he died. Our whole world shattered.
With the death of our eldest child, I had no framework on how to proceed through my own mental health journey. People don’t talk about such things. As a television producer, I found myself thinking about our responsibility in telling stories around grief and mental health.
Can we as an industry tell those stories accurately and effectively? I do not remember growing up watching shows that talked about mental health. What I do remember is hearing hushed whispers about a woman we knew who “went to the hospital after a nervous breakdown,” and the raised eyebrows that followed. All I learned was that I should not have nervous breakdown – whatever that meant.
My experience is that the topics of death, dying and grief are quite taboo – even though most will experience it. If you love someone, you will grieve. And anyone who has been there will tell you that grief can
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