Heads up, this piece is probably going to be tonally all over the place. But, so is grief, so, let’s pretend it was on purpose and continue on, shall we? I’ll also try to keep this light, it’s a Muppet fansite, not my therapy session. Though Shane Keating keeps trying to charge me $300 every time I talk to him, so it’s not far off.
Last week Elmo made me cry.
Last year, my father, Simon Fairclough, passed away while he was on holiday in New Zealand with my mother and their best friends. It was super sudden, I’d spoken to him just a couple of days earlier and we were making plans for dinner before a concert we were going to the next week.
Then, in the space of a phone call on April 20th 2023, I fundamentally changed as a person.
Grief is a funny thing. Many of you reading this will have experienced your own struggles with it, and unfortunately it’s inevitable that the rest of you will at some stage too (so much for keeping it light, Fairclough – I promise Muppet stuff is coming – to tide you over; how weird was Mr Poodlepants?). While feelings of love and friendship can vary, they’re also fairly consistent. Grief, though? Grief is something that everyone feels in their own unique way.
You could be like my sister, who decided to grab everyone she loves and hold them tight. You could be like my brother, who, for a while, had that feeling of life being pointless. You could be like my mother, who became a rock in a tsunami and held everyone together. Or, you could be like me, who kind of pretended everything was a-okay, when really I was doing terribly.
Right, now, let’s get Muppety. What was I saying about Elmo? Oh, right. That little red menace made me cry.
Recently Sesame Street released a gorgeous video of Elmo and actor Andrew Garfield discussing grief. Andrew lost his mother in 2019 to cancer, and he has been a beautiful voice of grief since. Take a look;
UGH! TEARS!
So much of this video resonated with me when I watched it, in a way I’m not sure it could have before Dad died. And though it’s things I’ve heard a lot of the past 18 months, for some reason hearing it from Sesame Street, and my old buddy Elmo in particular, stabbed me in the feelings in a way I couldn’t have predicted. It’s not until I sit here thinking it over that I’ve realized why that is – it’s because it’s bridged two very big, but very seperate parts of my life; Muppets and Grief.
That’s not to say The Muppets didn’t play a role at all in my grief. Hell, The Electric Mayhem were present for the bombshell phone call, as it came while I was watching a preview of Episode 8 of Muppets Mayhem which was due to release the next month (it’s the one where they’ve angered a bunch of pop fans, and they were about to sing ‘We Are One’ – I wouldn’t finish the episode for around a week and a half). I spent a night at the Muppets Mayhem premiere just a few weeks after Dad’s passing, enjoying both a night I would consider a Top 3 moment of my life, whilst also internally dealing with the worst thing I’d ever experienced. You can read about that night here – I met Weird Al, whatever, no big deal.
I’m going to expand on something from that night, but don’t worry if you didn’t read it again just now, I’ll catch you up. I hope he won’t mind me discussing this, but it was during that premiere that I had my first real conversation with someone who had also lost a parent. Matt Vogel’s father passed away 10 years ago, and he had heard that I’d lost mine. He pulled me aside after we’d taken some silly photos together, put a hand on my shoulder, and we just spoke for a few minutes about grief, our fathers, and our feelings. Matt told me it sucks but it gets easier. He told me that there is joy to be found in grief and to look for that. We surmised that there are two types of people – those who’ve lost a parent, and those who have no idea what’s coming. He sent me a very sweet message the next day following up, and that conversation was a beacon of light in amongst a black out.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Sesame Street has dealt with death. Famously, Mr Hooper was killed off after his actor, Will Lee, passed away. Big Bird learns that when people die, they don’t come back. And while the humans say they’ll miss him a lot, the point of that piece is mainly to explain that death isn’t something people return from. The concept of grief plays little to no part. This new video, however, does the opposite. It doesn’t tell children what death is, it instead tells children that missing someone is the next bit, what comes after the person goes away forever. It’s almost the perfect companion to that original Mr Hooper’s death video, and it only occurs to me now that such an important piece of media never got a follow up in the four decades since its release. That said, I appreciate that they’ve done it in such a way as this, rather than, I don’t know, Telly being sad that his pet hamster died. Hey kids, guess what? Parents die!
To have Elmo and Spider-Man sit together to muse about the loss of a parent has healed me more than I would have expected it to. To have something that changed me as a person be connected now so beautifully to something that has become a weird strange passion of mine is such a wonderful thing. I think the subconcious child in the back of my brain needed Elmo, the guy who taught me my ABCs and my 123’s and how to do the Elmo Slide, to tell me that it’s okay that I’m still sad about my Dad. I needed Andrew Garfield, who I’ve watched discuss his mother on a multitude of platforms, to sit with my friend Elmo and say things about sadness being a gift because we lost somebody that we loved. Though not in this video (he told it on Colbert – here you go), my favorite thing Andrew has said about grief is ‘I hope this stays with me, because it’s all the unexpressed love I didn’t get to tell her’. I told my Dad I loved him a lot. I still do.
I want to tell just one more Dad/Muppet story, maybe the only time the two worlds collided (aside from Dad’s terrible Fozzie impression, with sounded like Grover with strepthroat saying ‘Wocka Wocka Wocka’ – yes, 3 Wocka’s). Joe Hennes and I used to do a podcast called ‘To Introduce Our Guest Star’, where we’d surprise each other with guests. Early in to Season 1, I invited Paul Williams to be on the show. Paul, of course, wrote the songs for The Muppet Movie and The Muppet Christmas Carol, as well as being a guest on The Muppet Show. When I told my folks the night before, my Dad ran from across the house, genuinely astonished that I’d be talking to Paul Williams. ‘THE Paul Williams??’ he asked, multiple times. Turns out Dad was a big Smokey and The Bandit fan.
The next day, after we’d recorded, I told Paul how excited Dad had been. Paul asked if Dad was around, which he was, and he told me to go and get him. For just a few moments, I got to introduce Dad to one of his favorite celebrities of all time. Paul was the best, as he always is, and Dad spend the rest of the day, and in fact most of the rest of his life, telling all of his friends that he’d met Paul Williams. The image below even became his profile picture for a while!
Again, I know this piece has been a little all over the place, but I’d like to thank you for reading it. If you’re grieving someone, please know you aren’t alone, and I hope the Elmo and Andrew piece gives you a little bit of what it gave me. If I may, I’d also highly suggest reading the book ‘You Are Not Alone‘, by comedian Cariad Lloyd. It helped me a lot. Remember, sadness is a gift.
By Jarrod Fairclough – Jarrod@ToughPigs.com
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