I believe that was said on air, and it has certainly been flung around liberally in other forums.
However, going out on the batter, trying a spot of mild sexual assault, then gong out again the next night to a Valentine’s bash at your local strikes me as being a way of grieving that ought to raise more eyebrows than it has done. I fondly believe I would think this even had this storyline not been aired immediately in the wake of a bereavement of my own. Indecorous, to say the least. It’s not that she’s not cold in her grave, dammit, it’s that the grave isn’t even bloody dug yet.
For someone whose mothering is being cited as exemplary, JD left behind a remarkably unpleasant - and ill-mannered - brood.
Such a pity June Spencer has retired: I’d love to hear Peggy’s reaction to Brian’s digging in of heels. (Was JD a regular communicant? I know she was fairly often at St. Stephen’s, but how much of that was merely as a bag-carrier/minder for Peggy, I’m unclear.)
Oh, and pretty please, can Alice go back on the sauce PDQ? Thank you for your attention to this matter;- )
Brian is definitely being told he’s doing it wrong, and I don’t think they’ll stop now.
Lina actually seemed to be talking sense. Did Sarah Hehir actually listen to an ex-alcoholic rather than just doing the usual TA thing of phoning the relevant organisation’s PR department and not bothering to make any notes?
(I imagine she must know a lot of alcoholics. I mean, if I knew her socially I’d probably drink more.)
On message boards people are saying that it’s time for him to snap out of it and he must pull himself together for the sake of his children – who, let’s not forget, are all but one of them over thirty; the one aged twenty is refusing to speak to him, so there isn’t much Brian can do for Ruairi. Jennifer’s children by other men are both over fifty, and all four older ones should be able to manage without expecting Daddy to provide them with emotional support: he never has before, so why on earth would he start while he is himself deeply distressed because his wife died less than a month ago?
I find this “pull himself together and care more for others than for himself” diktat frankly disgusting.
He could lock front and back door and turn off his phone. They simply won’t let the poor sod alone; seven messages to him in an hour is at least six too many, and my bet is that all of them were about the sender and not him.
The only person I recall asking him how he felt was David. Possibly Will did, in a sideways manner, and Noluthando listened when he told her what he was feeling like and does seem to have taken in what he said, since she later told Alice to let him speak when Alice was telling him what he had to feel and do.
(I also note, by the way, that Noluthando told him that he was the only person who had asked her if she missed her ex-boyfriend. He is not as emotionally illiterate as he is made out to be; it’s his children who don’t have a clue and are utterly self-absorbed.)
I have also been told, twice and by a moderator, that my experience of arranging a direct cremation for my father was impossible and cannot have happened the way I described.
So close! Still, we mustn’t give up hope. Brian’s decision not to have a funeral might do the trick. Hopefully Alice hasn’t taken on board Lisa’s surprisingly excellent advice. Alice’s ‘buddy’ has toughened up a lot since last time, hasn’t she?
As for the grieving, this storyline does seem to be going out of its way to demonstrate the opposite of the message it gives lip-service to. That or ‘no right way to grieve’ means you can be as awful as you like to another grieving person and that’s all fine and dandy.
By the way, what the heck has Brian done for Ruairi to be shunning him? Something happened the night they were forced by Alice to play Cluedo, I forget just what.
Brian told Ruairi that Jennifer loved him, Ruairi said no she didn’t, Ruairi said Brian didn’t deserve her, neither of them did, they were both just selfish. Brain told him he’d had enough of this and tried to talk about the game. Ruairi knocked it onto the floor and rushed out.
In other words Ruairi attacked him, Brian failed to grovel and apologise for having breathed the same air as his wife and instead said he had had enough of being insulted, so Ruairi rushed out of the house never to return (or something equally based in melodrama of the 1920s).