Image: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery/Max

Death is not a plot twist. In real life, it’s something else entirely: messy, and always with you.

Mr. Big died on a Peloton. Bambi’s mom got shot in the snow. And Fleabag? She never got over the loss of her best friend, Boo—can you blame her?

My husband, Joel, died in real life. There was no John Williams soundtrack. No inappropriate witty banter. Just devastation. And those of us left behind—me, our daughter, his parents, his friends—trying to reconcile a life without him here.

Hollywood Loves a Tragedy—As Long As It Ends on Cue

I get why writers use death as a plot point—it’s dramatic, universal, guaranteed to pull at an audience’s emotions. I’ve done it too. One of my first gigs was writing for Party of Five, a show about orphaned kids left to raise each other. Havoc ensued. Later, I wrote a memoir about losing Joel. I didn’t write it for ratings. I wrote it because that was the only way I knew how to heal.

But here’s what I can’t take about Hollywood’s take on death: It’s rarely, if ever, done right.

Grief Is Not a Three-Act Structure

We’ve seen it several times. Grief gets slotted into a neat three-act arc: shocking death, conflict, healing montage and resilience. Cue the credits. Grief is vanquished. Hooray! But grief doesn’t follow a three-act structure that subsides when the movie ends. Obviously, there are time constraints in film and television. I’m not that delusional. But grief loops, spirals, retreats, and resurfaces.

It is not the villain of the story—it’s the setting.

It’s the atmosphere. It’s a whole new world you now live in, and it doesn’t end because you’ve grown or learned or kissed someone new. You just get better at carrying it. And carry it you will…

To Trader Joe’s.

Your 3 o’clock Zoom call.

The high school reunion.

Grief isn’t wrapped up in a pretty and sometimes a little messy, bow. It doesn’t leave when the credits roll. It sits next to you, a constant companion. It shakes your equilibrium. It hits you when you least expect it. You can rebuild your life, yes—but you’re always aware of the permanent loss of your person no matter how long they have been gone.

In the grief world, it’s known that one never gets over a loss—you simply learn to live with it. It’s been 12 years since I lost Joel, and I still can’t believe all that he has and will miss. All of our daughter’s graduations, from middle school through college. He never saw her learn to drive or have a job or even a boyfriend. He also never saw me in a new-ish career, with a new love and a new home. He also hasn’t seen me age—which, maybe, is okay.

Somehow life has moved forward without him.

That in and of itself, feels miraculous.

Embracing a New Reality

I embraced the word widow early on. I had to—I couldn’t make sense of what my life had become. Saying I was a widow anchored me. It’s almost like I had to say it to believe it. When you get married and think of the life you want to live with your partner, and vow to stay together “in sickness and in health,” it’s usually an abstract concept.

Until it’s not.

The hours spent in bed crying. The sobbing while making dinner. The tears that fall when a certain song comes on the car radio. That’s what Hollywood misses. Grief, in the real world, is repetitive, awkward, and weirdly mundane. It’s forgetting how to do things you once did on autopilot. I would put the leashes on our dogs, open the front door, and literally couldn’t remember if I was coming in from a walk or going on one. Grief is picking up the phone to call someone but when they answer, you don’t know why you’ve called. Grief is also obsessing over banal things you can no longer ask your person: “That café with the pistachio lattes—was that when we were in Portland or Austin?”

The Scenes That Never Make It Onscreen

What I crave is less cinematic closure and more truth:

Give me a scene where someone cries in the DMV line because she can’t update her address—the bills are in her husband’s name.

Show me the daughter who simply can’t update her “in case of emergency” contact at the doctor’s office even though her mother died last year.

Let’s see the friends anxiously scrolling through Facebook searching for the last time they were all together with the person who is now gone.

So no, I don’t need a feel-good montage where I throw open the curtains and cue Sara Bareilles music. I need more stories that leave space for the mess. That allow sadness and joy to coexist. That don’t confuse survival with a happy ending.

Because the truth is, even with a full and good life, I still miss Joel every day. Grief still sneaks up on me, this many years later, even though I’ve learned to laugh again. To love again. To live again.

It’s not neat or tidy. But it’s real.

And that’s the story worth telling.