Last week's "One Punk Under God" was really sad. I guess it was filmed in the summer, and so I'm taking comfort in knowing that "Celebrity Death Beeper" hasn't notified me of anything bad having happened to Tammy Faye, but boy, by the end of the episode, I had to go check to make sure she was still, you know, alive.
During this episode, Jay was over there, visiting with his mom before the move to NY with his wife, and she (Tammy Faye) was doing an interview with some guy, and in the middle of the interview, she had to stop because she couldn't breathe. I mean, she was sitting there on her couch in the middle of her very middle-class looking living room, with her eight tons of makeup on, the tiniest person, ever (smaller than Nicole Ritchie), and she was holding on with both hands, to her composure, to dignity, to life, to God. She seemed afraid, but not-afraid. In her weakness she seemed, I don't know, not resigned to whatever's next, but up for it, in some weird way. Like she knows she doesn't have to go through it alone. Maybe all that is bullshit, my own dream of what a real born-again Christian would think at what is probably the end of their life (because it's the opposite of how I imagine I will be), but wow, she totally had me in tears.
And right there in the middle of her living room, with the Sundance cameras rolling and the guy sitting there (granted, I think he was from some religious publication), without any kind of warning or "excuse me while I pray," she closed her eyes, did the palms-raised-to-heaven move I've seen my own mom do thousands of times, and started praying to Jesus to heal her body... speaking to him like she was on the telephone. No - speaking to him like she was sitting at his feet and he had his hand on her head.
I'm telling you, I was pretty much a mess at this point. I mean, I couldn't talk. Actually, I couldn't talk right now, and I'm sure this post is going to be extra-gooey sentimental, and I'm sorry, if I don't write about it all cleverly and to the point. Can't do it.
But.
I am so lucky. I am sooooo lucky my own mother made it through chemo and radiation, and all the shit she went through last year. My own mother who believes in the same guy Tammy does, who prays the same way she does, who maybe didn't go through the same exact shit she did in life, but still - my mother made it, and I am so lucky, and thankful.
If you click on the title of this post, you will be taken to Tammy Faye's official website.
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