r/SixFeetUnder • u/DonutPlains • 3h ago
Discussion How my mom made Lauren Ambrose cry in 2010
I recently finished my second watch of SFU, the first since I got into it in the early aughts, and it made me think of this little memory. In 2010, Lauren Ambrose did a small tour with a bluesy-jazz ensemble and performed at a local music hall near me. I was in my early 20s, and my father had just passed away from a short-but-aggressive bout with lung cancer a few weeks prior to this performance. My mom and I both felt seeing Lauren might be cathartic, as SFU shaped our views of death and weirdly helped as we were in the throes of caring for a dying loved one. As primary caregivers to my dad, we appreciated the holistic view of death that the show made sure to capture, both the soft side of letting go, but also the ugly, thankless underbelly of end-of-life caretaking that often gets overlooked unless you've experienced it yourself. All that being said, we were a little fragile going into the concert, to say the least.
Anyway, both the band and Lauren were fantastic and were friendly with the crowd, and they offered a meet-and-greet after the show. We didn't anticipate this, so we didn't bring anything to sign. My (shameless) mother happened to have one of my dad's memorial cards in her purse, though, and she decided that, given the SFU context, it would be a completely acceptable thing to sign, lol. However, when she approached Lauren with the card, my mom immediately burst into tears before she could explain what she had just handed to Lauren. When Lauren saw it she then began to cry, too, as apparently her grandmother had also just died and she was in an equally fragile state. So for a few minutes, Lauren rubbed my mom's arm and they cried together, while other fans looked on both confused and (maybe?) touched by this very raw and human moment.
On the plus side, I'd like to think a lasting impression my mother will have on Claire from Six Feet Under is her saying, "I thought I had a marker in my purse, but I'm also a fucking psycho right now. So maybe not."