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 annihilate your mental health like a linebacker taking down a fourth-string quarterback.
The first year after he died is a blur. I am not sure how I did it, but to pay the bills I dove back into work. After long days on set, and in the fringes of my personal time, I realized that grief had altered my very core. I had panic attacks now. I gained 60 pounds from blindly eating, trying to stop the tears. I was sleeping too much, and decided it was the fault of the SSRIs I had been prescribed. I weaned myself off, taking my mental health into my own hands. This was not a good idea.
The next level of my grief was suicidal ideation. The only reason I could not kill myself, I reasoned, was because my daughter did not need more tragedy after the loss of her brother. I felt trapped. Forced to be alive – and not wanting to live.
In the early months of my second year of grief, the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) came out. There was a new diagnosis: “Prolonged Grief Disorder” – when heavy feelings of grief continue beyond twelve months. I do not normally follow news of the mental health world, but clearly my algorithm was onto me, and the headline of this new “disorder” fell before my eyes. I was absolutely livid. How dare they classify my feelings for my dead child as a “disorder”? I raged. Twelve months? I should be OVER it by now?
It did not occur to me at the time that I was holding tightly to a stigma of mental health. Why did I fight a diagnosis so hard, if not for shame? Had I become the disgraced woman I heard about in my childhood?
My wife urged me to call a psychiatrist. Begrudgingly, I did. Of course, guess what diagnosis was promptly handed to me? Yep. Prolonged Grief Disorder. I felt my hackles rise.
Thankfully, a wonderful psychiatrist told me with great warmth that the DSM-5-TR “disorder” was a good thing. It meant that my insurance would allow her to help me. I cooled my engine and listened.
She agreed that the prior SSRI had not worked well, and she put me on an NDRI antidepressant, encouraging me to begin cognitive behavioral therapy with a psychologist. I complied.
Around the same time, my career provided me with what I can only call kismet. Scout Productions and Amy Poehler’s Paper Kite Productions were hiring a showrunner for a series based on a short book with a weird title: “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.”
I responded as most do: “Excuse me… did you say ‘Death? Cleaning?’” Yes. It’s about cleaning up your crap before you die so that your loved ones don’t have to after you’re gone. They explained that the Swedes were much more pragmatic about death, and they wanted the show to take that tack.
This was my spit take moment.
I needed that job. I confessed to a bunch of really important Hollywood people that I was a mother in grief and that death cleaning was something I had been in the thick of. Wow, was I ready to talk about this. And here was the great part: We were going to LAUGH. Before grief leveled my world, I was funny. Laughing is my favorite, and I knew that if we could bring levity to this dark topic that was so very taboo in people’s minds, then we could help others with handrails as they walked their own paths of grief. Much of death cleaning is not only preparation of our own homes, but the work that comes when we clean up after our loved ones have died.
I got the job.
What came next was a summer of filming with real people dealing with all stages of grief, dying and death. My own grief entwined with theirs, and we found ourselves laughing, crying and picking up the pieces.
The feeling of healing extended behind the camera. My co-executive producer’s mother died during filming. She went home to be with family, and returned later in the summer, knowing we would embrace her right where she was. Our crew had profound conversations, exploring their own experiences of death, dying and grief. We all witnessed something miraculous take hold. In the acknowledgement and (dare I say) celebration of the very human experience of grief, we found a steady ground – and that magic worked its way onto the screen. I will forever be proud of the effect that the show has had on viewers. So many strangers reached out, expressing gratitude, and telling us how we helped them.
Between Swedish death cleaning, new antidepressants, therapy and willingness to explore what happens when we crack our hearts wide open, I found peace.
I will walk with grief the rest of my days, but now I know how to do it safely. Grief and mental health are inextricable. In our industry of telling stories, we cannot ignore this topic that affects us all. I feel so grateful that I got to tell the story responsibly… and in the end, we even got to laugh.
J.J. Duncan is the showrunner for Peacock’s “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” She is also involved with the End Well Foundation and will speak at the End Well Symposium on November 16th. Today is World Mental Health Day; on behalf of Hollywood, Health & Society at the Norman Lear Center, Duncan shares her personal story to help remove the stigmas around mental health, end of life and grief.
