Death On The Distaff Side

Somewhat More Morbid Than The Usual Post...

I'm working my way through Series Three of Downton Abbey, the PBS/BBC drama set in WWI-era England.

It was highly recommended by my kinfolk at the last get-together, so when I saw an opportunity to pick up all three seasons for less than $30, I took a shot, and have been enjoying the show.

Mostly...

Overall, it's kind of an Upstairs/Downstairs sort of drama, peeking into the lives of the gentry as well as the working class that keep this huge estate running.  It's full of cliffhangers and breathless exclamations of undying love, and all the usual tweedy toffee-nosed drama.

My main beef is that they keep dragging the same characters through the mud without a pause for three seasons now, in some cases for no reason other than they need to keep the tension high.  You've got villains being villainous for no real purpose, and interesting subplots that just sort of wither on the vine.

And, of course, people die.

Aside from a raging dose of HMS Titanic and trench warfare, which kills off a bunch of gentry, you get a incursion of the Spanish Flu, which gives one of the characters a very moving, genteel expiration, complete with soliloquy.  Almost saintlike, if you asks me...

Of course, I kept imagining the bowels voiding noisily as the family stayed gathered around the bedside, but that's just me...

Then, a death in childbirth, and it's the polar opposite.  The paralytic seizures of eclampsia, resulting in the suffocation of the young lady.  Most distressing to watch...

At any rate, a day or so after watching this, I'm perusing Facebook and see a post that a friend of mine is "In A Relationship".  Immediately another young woman's death is front & center in my memory.

See, the person now "In A Relationship" is the former husband of the dead woman.  She died last December.  He's been on a globe-hopping trail to scatter bits of her ashes in interesting places.  On this last trip, apparently he took along a partner.

Now, I'm not one to dictate how long people wear the black, or how people deal with their grief, but I'm having a hard time with this.  I guess I'm still grieving the loss of someone who died far too young.

Anyway, I think he'd have been better off keeping the new relationship under wraps for a few more months.  Am I just being hopelessly old-fashioned??