The End

"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground./So it is, and so it will be, for so has it been, time out of mind:/Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned/with lilies and with laurel they go;/but I am not resigned."--Edna St. Vincent Millay


Today is the day I have been dreading for months. You may laugh, but you had better not let me hear you when I tell you why. Today is September 23, 2011, the day of the last episode of my soap opera "All My Children". It's going off the air after 41 years. It is proving to be one of the saddest days of my life, and each time I contemplate its end, I cry.

As a freshman in college, one day I walked into the student lounge to warm up and to relax before my next class. I sat down with about twenty other students and joined them in watching the soaps on ABC. I watched them all: All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital. But the one that I became hooked on was AMC. I was 18 years old.

In the ensuing years I watched it on and off, then mostly on once I could afford a VCR and could watch it after my job teaching English to middle schoolers. Sometimes I was exhausted but I never wanted to miss an episode of Erica Kane slapping someone across the face, or Tad the Cad bedding Dottie or Hillary or Liza and her mother. There was the time Erica yelled at a bear in the woods and scared him away. "(Go away, bear. I am Erica Kane!) I was mesmerized by the love stories, the way they took on social issues like AIDS and abortion. The characters came and went. Some of them I missed, some not so much. I watched through good writing, bad writing, and characters who came back from the dead. There were switched baby stories and people who got married to someone new every couple of years. God, I loved the silliness of it, the oftentimes banal banter of characters who never seemed to learn from their mistakes. But it was also a smart soap opera with a lot of heart. It was pure escapism and I have been watching, and escaping, ever since.

Naturally, watching one show from the seventies to now, one could call me obsessed. Certainly anyone who knows me well, knows AMC is the show I'd choose if I could choose only one show to watch for the rest of my life. They also know my devotion to Susan Lucci. I have the books, the dolls, the perfume, the jewelry, and the Malibu Pilates chair to prove it.

I write this as a warning to my loving family and friends, especially as they may be unsure about what to do and say to me today, of all days. After all, I am about to lose my best friends, the routine of some thirty-odd years, and my daily devotion. I will tell you that if I hear an "Oh brother", or see an eye-roll or smirk, if I sense that you think this loss is no big deal, you'd best avoid me altogether.

If you can't understand, perhaps I can help you. Think about spring--spring after a long, snowy, dark winter. What if spring ceased to exist? What if you knew you could never again see flowers bursting from the ground? Or hear birds noisily chattering in the boughs of leafy green trees? What if the sun ceased to shine on your face? Would you miss it?

What if, in some insane nightmare, there were no more books? They just disappeared from the whole world? Or, for my sports-minded friends, what if the Yankees or the Red Sox broke up, and all of baseball went away? How would you feel then?

Stop saying I'm being ridiculous. Just because you don't care what happens when 1:00 comes around Monday through Friday, doesn't mean it shouldn't matter to me. I want you to know that if you can't say, "Celia, ( or Mom)I'm so sorry your show is gone. I know how much you've loved it all these years.", then don't say a damn thing to me.

At 1:00 today, I will go into my bedroom and shut the door. The t-shirt I'll be wearing says "Pine Valley University, est. 1970". I will watch the very last episode of my show and, at 2:00 I will be inconsolable. So just leave me alone.

Because if I hear so much as a snort or a sigh when you see me with tears in my eyes, or if I see in your face the slightest evidence of pitiful, trust me when I say I will slap you across your snarky face, and I'll do it Erica Kane style.