Only Make Believe

My grandfather Pop-Pop’s favorite song was “Only Make Believe,” from the musical Showboat.  It is a love song where the leading man implores the leading woman to pretend that he loves her, for indeed in reality he does.

The idea of pretending something until it is real is something that I think about a lot as an actor.  I just came off of a show where I played a super angsty teenage girl named Lisa.  Once or twice (ish) after the show I went home, saw my boyfriend and without thinking I would Lisa him: roll my eyes, say “whatever,” and be in an unreasonably contrary mood.  Then I would realize I was being an asshole, apologize, and remember that the drama needs to stay onstage.

I’m really good at pretending.  Sometimes too good. 

It is easy to pretend my dad is still alive.  It is easy to pretend that the last three weeks never happened.  Sometimes so easy that for a little while I convince myself that everything is still fine. 

As an adult I’ve gone four and five months without seeing my dad—we would talk for a couple minutes every few days, but sometimes it would be weeks between really good, long conversations… So now that I’m back in New York, my routine feels normal. 

When I read my dad’s books, and see his picture, he is almost as present for me as he was during certain times when he was alive plus, he is at the front of my mind.  I talk about him a lot (which I always have, but probably do more now)… I enjoy talking about him, reading his words…It makes him seem very near.  It makes me happy.  It makes me forget, and I slip quickly into a land of make believe.

The stages of grief that we all know: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—in the last few weeks I have felt moments and/or hours of all these things.  But what has surprised me is the intensity of each of these feelings… especially the intensity of denial.

Joan Didion (whose books I must admit I’ve not read), evidently wrote about the insanity and derangement that comes along with grief in The Year of Magical Thinking.  And it’s true.  I am insane with grief.

I slip into my crazy dreamland of make believe and I am fine.  My dad is alive, my family is happy, everything is as it always has been.  Sometimes I still imagine my future with my father, the places we’ll go and things we’ll do.  Then, something will happen: a show will come on that he used to watch or someone will say something I know he’d find interesting, and then for a second I will remember.

Then I have choices.  I can use my excellent pretending abilities to flick away the reminder of reality or I can force myself into a moment of acceptance.  To do this, I think of the most morbid things I can: how I imagine my father looked when my mother found him, helping her pick out the last suit he will ever wear, touching his cold hand at the memorial, looking at his closed coffin on a bier in the snowy sunlight.  But, these things don’t always ring true—they seem like some alternate universe… different from my safe land of make-believe, but still unreal. 

So, to break the dream of make believe, I think about our broken dreams.  I remember watching “Father of the Bride” with my dad when I was eight or nine, thinking he was so like Steve Martin… wondering if he’d cry on my wedding day.  I think about how my sister and I talked last month about what our kids would call our parents… I re-read the e-mails he sent me, reminding me to send him material for a new play or feedback on a piece he was re-working.

Then I remember, all over again.

The hardest part of my day when I was at home in Wisconsin was waking up.  Not because I so dreaded the day, but because for a split second when you wake up, you feel happy, everything seems fine—then, you remember everything, and it’s a little slice of the hell you experienced when you first heard the unbelievable, earth-shattering, life-altering news. 

This is the thing about being in New York.  In New York the reminders of my dad are not everywhere all the time like they were in Wisconsin.  So, my make-believe skills have improved, giving me more moments of happiness.  However, this means I wake up all day long—all day the self-preserving actress pretends that I am fine… literally pretends my dad is still alive… that he’ll call… that I’ll tell him this or that later… and then I have to stop.  I have to wake myself up from the dream a dozen times a day. I have to remind myself I can’t spend my life playing make believe, I have to make myself believe the truth.