Beyond the Screen- Young Sheldon and Grief

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to CC Airwaves.
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My name is Paige Matillo, and today we're starting something new on the podcast.
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This is the very first episode of a new series we're calling Beyond the Screen, where we'll take a closer look at the conversations, themes, and moments we encounter in television and movies and explore how they connect to our lives, our experiences, and our Catholic faith.
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Now, I wanted to start this series mainly for me, because I am definitely the type of person who connects things happening in my own life to the things I see on TV.
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Sometimes I can hear something explained to me several different ways, but it isn't until I see it portrayed on a screen that something finally clicks.
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So, for example, a fictional character can say something that puts words to a feeling I've never known how to explain, or a scene in a television show can make me look at something I've experienced in an entirely different way.
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And that's really where the idea for this series came from.
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So grief is something we talk about often here on CC Airwaves, but grief isn't something that only exists in grief support groups, books about loss, or conversations specifically about death.
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We encounter it everywhere, including in the stories we watch for entertainment.
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And sometimes those stories can give us a way to understand emotions that are incredibly difficult to explain ourselves.
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I also wanted to mention something important as we begin this series.
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Not every television show or movie that we're going to discuss is going to be Catholic.
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Some may have very little to do with religion at all, but I don't think that means that we can't learn something from them or look at the themes they present through the lens of our own faith.
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We can then encounter questions about love, death, suffering, forgiveness, hope, and what happens after loss in all kinds of places.
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Part of what I hope to do with this series is to take those moments and ask, what can this teach us about grief?
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And how can we connect what we're seeing to our faith?
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And for our first episode, we're starting with a show I wasn't necessarily watching because I expected it to make me think deeply about grief or faith.
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Young Sheldon.
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Recently, I was watching Young Sheldon with my mom.
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And if you don't know what Young Sheldon is, it is the prequel to Big Bang Theory, which has a star named Sheldon Cooper, and Young Sheldon follows him as a child.
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So anyway, as I was saying, I was recently watching this show with my mother because it becomes a little ritual for us whenever my dad heads out to play bocce to watch a show together.
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So he goes to bocce, my mom and I watch a show, just a typical Monday night.
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It's usually something we just do for fun together.
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But every once in a while, the show we're watching for entertainment completely catches us off guards.
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And that's exactly what happened when we watched the episode A Crisis of Faith and Octopus Aliens.
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In the episode, Mary Cooper, Sheldon's mother, experiences a crisis of faith following the tragic death of a young girl from her church congregation.
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Now, Mary is someone whose faith is a huge part of her identity throughout the series.
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So watching her suddenly question something that has always seemed so certain for her is so incredibly powerful.
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And I think that's the part that stood out immediately to me.
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Sometimes we have this idea that having strong faith means we shouldn't question God.
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We think that if we truly believe, we'll somehow understand why terrible things happen, or we'll automatically be able to find comfort in our faith when they do.
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But grief doesn't always look that way.
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Sometimes loss makes us question the very things we thought we understood.
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When something terrible happens, especially when someone dies young or under circumstances that seem incredibly unfair, one of the first questions many people ask is simply, why?
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Why did this happen?
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Why this person?
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Why now?
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And for people of faith, sometimes that question becomes, God, why did you allow this?
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And those are difficult questions.
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And sometimes we're afraid to even ask them because we think questioning God means losing our faith.
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But watching Mary struggle with those questions reminds us that doubt and faith can exist in the same person at the same time.
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Now, throughout the episode, Mary's family realizes something isn't right.
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One of the biggest signs is when Mary, who is normally very incredibly committed to her church, says that she isn't going to attend on a Sunday.
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Eventually, she opens up to her mother about what she's experiencing.
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Mary explains that everything really came to a head when she tried to write a symphony card to the family of the little girl who died.
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She begins writing the familiar phrase that their daughter is in a better place, but she can't finish it because she starts questioning how anywhere could possibly be better than being at home safe with her family.
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And that moment really stayed with me because they're in a better place is something we hear so often after someone dies.
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Usually the person saying it has the best intention, they're trying to offer comfort.
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They're trying to remind us of heaven and they're trying to remind us that the person we love is no longer suffering.
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But grief can make even something we believe through our faith incredibly difficult to accept emotionally.
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As Catholics, we have hope in eternal life.
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We believe death is not the end.
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We believe that we believe in the resurrection and the promise of being reunited with God.
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Those beliefs can provide tremendous comfort when grieving.
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But believing in heaven doesn't mean that we don't wish the person was still here.
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Those things can exist together.
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We can trust that someone is with God and still desperately wish they were sitting beside us.
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We can believe in eternal life and still feel angry that someone's earthly life ended.
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We can have faith and still have questions.
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And I think that's exactly what Mary was experiencing.
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She's not suddenly someone who doesn't care about God.
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She's grieving.
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She's trying to reconcile what she has always believed with something that feels completely impossible to understand.
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And what I found especially interesting about the episode is where Mary's comfort eventually comes from.
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And it comes from Sheldon, her son.
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If you watch the show, you know why that's significant.
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Sheldon is incredibly scientific and logical, and he does not share his mother's religious beliefs.
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Throughout the series, Mary and Sheldon often approach questions about God and the universe from completely different perspectives.
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And yet when Mary is struggling with her faith, Sheldon does not try to argue with her.
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He doesn't tell her she's wrong for questioning God.
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He doesn't give her an easy answer for why a child died.
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Instead, he meets his mother where she is.
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Sheldon talks about the incredibly precise conditions necessary for life in the universe to exist.
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And he connects that improbability to the odds of him ending up with Mary as his mother.
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He approaches the conversation through science because the language, because that's the language he understands.
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But what he gives Mary is something much more personal.
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He gives her wonder.
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He reminds her that maybe not everything has to have an answer for it to have meaning.
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And I love that the person who helps Mary reconnect with her faith is the person you would probably least expect to do it.
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It also made me think about the way we support people who are grieving.
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When someone's hurting, our instinct is often to fix it.
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We want to find the perfect words that will make them feel better.
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We want to explain why something happened or remind them of what they're supposed to believe.
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But sometimes that isn't what someone needs.
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Sometimes they simply need us to sit beside them in the questions.
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Sheldon couldn't answer why that girl died.
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Nobody could.
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What he could do was remind his mom of something beautiful and meaningful when she was struggling to see it herself.
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And sometimes that's what support looks like.
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We don't always need to have an answer.
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We can listen, we can be present, we can remind someone that we love them.
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And sometimes we can offer a perspective they hadn't considered without trying to talk them out of their grief.
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But I think there's also an important lesson here about where comfort can come from.
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We might expect Mary's pastor or another member of her church to be the person who restores her faith, but instead it's her skeptical, science-loving son.
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And I think God can work through people in circumstances we don't expect.
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Sometimes the thing that helps us through a difficult season isn't some huge spiritual revelation.
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Maybe it's just a conversation with someone.
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Maybe it's just a walk outside.
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Maybe it's hearing the exactly right song at the exactly the right time.
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Maybe it's a friend checking in on a day when you really needed it.
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Or maybe it's something you hear while watching a sitcom with your mom while your dad's out playing bocce.
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And that's actually one of the reasons I wanted to start Beyond the Screen.
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There are lessons everywhere if you're willing to pay attention.
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Sometimes a television show can help us recognize something about our own grief.
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A movie can help us feel understood.
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A character's experience can help us understand someone in our own life a little bit better.
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And sometimes these stories can make us think more deeply about our faith.
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And that's not to say that everything we watch or hear perfectly aligns with the Catholic faith.
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Part of engaging with media through our faith is being able to recognize that distinction.
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We can disagree with a part of the story or still find something meaningful in another part.
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We can ask questions about what we're watching instead of simply accepting every message we're given.
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For me, this episode of Young Sheldon raises a question I think many people who have experienced grief eventually confront.
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What happens when what I believe and what I feel don't seem to match?
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I can believe in, I can believe God is good and still feel angry.
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I can believe in heaven and still wish someone were here.
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I can trust God and still ask him why.
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I can have faith and still experience doubt.
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Maybe faith isn't about never having questions.
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Maybe part of faith is continuing to bring those questions to God, even when we don't have the answers.
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And I think that's what makes Mary's storyline so relatable.
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Her crisis of faith isn't necessarily the end of her faith.
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It's part of her relationship with God.
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She's wrestling with something she doesn't understand because something terrible has happened.
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And she's trying to figure out where God fits into that pain.
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And for anyone listening who's experienced something similar, I hope this episode of Young Sheldon and our conversation today offers a little reassurance that asking questions doesn't automatically mean you have abandoned your faith.
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If you've ever asked God, why did you let this happen, you're not alone.
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If you've ever been angry with God, you're not alone.
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If you ever sat in church after losing someone and struggled to find comfort in words that once brought you peace, you're not alone.
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And if you've ever believed in heaven while simultaneously wishing that with everything in you, that your loved one could just come home, you're not alone either.
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Grief and faith are both deeply personal experiences, and sometimes they become intertwined in complicated ways.
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We may not always receive the answers we're searching for, but that doesn't mean that we stop searching, and sometimes the questions themselves become part of the journey.
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That's what I hope we can explore together through this new series.
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And as we continue beyond the screen, we'll look at different TV shows and movies and other stories that portray grief in interesting ways, or some that just talk about loss in general.
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Some will be serious, some may surprise us, some might have absolutely nothing to do with religion on the surface.
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But we'll take a closer look at what they're saying about loss, love, healing, and the way we continue living after someone we love dies.
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And we'll ask where our faith fits into these conversations.
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Because understanding grief doesn't begin with someone explaining it to us.
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Sometimes it begins with seeing it.
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Thank you so much for joining me for our very first episode of Beyond the Screen.
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I hope you'll join me as we continue the series and explore the unexpected places where conversations about grief, healing, and faith can show up.
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And maybe the next time a scene in a television show makes you stop, you take a second and you pay attention to it.
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There may be a reason it stayed with you.
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Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and God bless you.