Exploring Life’s Gray Line: A ‘Six Feet Under’ Retrospective

By Stella Violet

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Who’s to say how long we’ll have on this planet, and what happens after we die. 

In this life, there is yes and there is no. There is black and there is white. And, there is the ultimate choice we face, life and death. 

But, there’s so much more complexity behind living, which makes it that much more intriguing. And, in HBO’s ‘Six Feet Under’ Alan Ball and Rick Cleveland explore morality, grief, family, and the pursuit of meaning. 

It’d be far too easy if life were made up of small tests with do-overs, where we could go back in time and fix our mistakes, but we were born to fail and cut corners. 

We crave individuality, because mirroring our neighbors would be terrifying and utterly exhausting. We’d be so full of boredom and stagnancy, living the same lives as everyone around us that it’d make us want to give up entirely. 

“For your information, miss high-and-mighty: this is life! People have crises, they push each other’s buttons, they inflict pain on one another, and once in a fucking blue moon they bring out the best in each other. But mostly, they bring out the worst.” 

There’s a gray line, the one placed in-between gravestones and emphasized on Facebook memorial accounts. And, there’s a family running a funeral home waiting to ask you exactly what headstone your loved one would’ve wanted, to display that grim gray line on. 

‘Six Feet Under’ is truly a show that stands the test of time because of its message, which much like the need for a funeral, doesn’t age. 

The characters face all of life’s choices head on, while confronting death every day through the operation of their family-owned funeral home, “Fisher & Sons”. 

And each episode dares to ask the question, what is it really all for? 

What does it truly mean to be alive? And, what do we do with the knowledge that one day it's just over. 

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I’ve always been a student of life and death, hearing and learning about every possible outcome: heaven and hell, reincarnation, simulations, an empty void. 

And, I’ve listened to everyone’s explanations on exactly how I should live my life: go to church, join a monastery, never listen to anything anyone has to say, and wait to have sex before marriage. 

I constantly overthink these “theories” of life. I read about philosophers like Immanuel Kant and psychoanalyze myself and everyone around me like Sigmund Freud. 

Yet, I still wonder, what is the right approach to living a “perfect life”? 

Is it finding true love? Is it becoming successful and rich before I die so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, just to leave it all to my ungrateful children? Is it letting go, never really making sense of reality and accepting that I lived a shitty life? 

These are the topics, ‘Six Feet Under’ aims to address, which makes it so timeless.

The death of a loved one can bring out any and every emotion in a human being. Some cry, some laugh and some act like it never happened to begin with. Each and every response is valid, but the unique and raw reactions of those around us is what helps us to understand how important living is. 

One essential quote that stuck out to me while watching this series was when a client asks the main protagonist and co-funeral director, Nate, 

“Why do people have to die?”

To which he responds, 

“To make life important. None of us know how long we’ve got. Which is why we have to make each day matter.” 

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I mean, tomorrow I could meet the love of my life, or get crushed by the Valley Metro, but I’ll never know what’ll happen if I don’t stick around and find out. 

That’s the funny thing about being human, sometimes you're on cloud nine, surrounded by your best friends, and the next moment you feel like the whole world is falling apart while you sit alone in your bedroom. 

But, that’s life, ebbs and flows of good and bad, all with a perfectly hidden lesson of morality. 

It’s when we start dwelling on the past that we miss the chance of living in the now. 

And, when we do dwell, we’re doomed with the same lesson disguised as something or someone else, because we were too occupied to see what was right in front of us the first time. 

I’m completely suffused with guilt from all the times I’ve spent focusing on the future, when the present had been nothing but bliss.

“What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard - you’re alive! What’s a little pain compared to that? 

“It can’t be that simple.” 

“What if it is?”  

Guilt can always be forgiven, but what we need to focus on is healing that self-righteous voice in our heads that stops us from living our lives, no matter what cards we’ve been dealt. 

I won’t sit here and tell you bad things don’t happen, they do, but it’s how you deal with them that matters. 

The value of forgiveness and letting go allows you to not let everything horrible in your life eat away at you, ultimately leaving you a shell of who you once were.

You’d be amazed at what I’ve gone through and the strength it’s taken to get out of these horrible situations, but it doesn’t define who I am as a person. 

“Well, we’re all wounded. We carry our wounds around with us through life, and eventually they kill us. Things happen that leave a mark in space, in time, in us.” 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that it’s about more than just myself, it’s about the people I’ve met and their stories, the compassion and empathy I can offer in a time of need, without thinking about how what I went through was so much worse. 

Life isn’t a competition, and holding onto resentment only makes you miserable. 

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The phrase, “that seems like a lifetime ago” haunts me. 

I’m only 20, but I think about my childhood friends who I haven’t seen since, my middle school frenemies, and my year and a half spent in Colorado when I was 10.

And, to me that “feels like a lifetime ago”. 

It’s so bittersweet how time works, sometimes a moment will feel like it only lasted, well… only a moment, but sometimes it feels like it’ll last a lifetime. 

“It’s almost like as we get older, the number of people that completely get us, shrinks” 

“If I were to go back” is a useless phrase, because once you’ve lived through another day the past is left behind. 

I used to take a lot of pictures, and I’m starting to again, because I’m so terrified that one day all of my memories will become obsolete. It’s like I’m grasping onto something that has already passed, desperately trying to reach my hand into that memory. 

“You can’t take a picture of this, it’s already gone” 

Living in survival mode is a disgusting habit, and I’m so desperately trying to be 16 again, when I would go to the park and roll down the grass fields I’d play in as a child. 

But, then again, somewhere hidden in my psyche is not only a “wild and free” 16-year-old me, but also a “loud and obnoxious” 10-year-old me, and a “naive and happy” 5-year-old me. 

Embracing the traits I’ve always had is what keeps me aligned with all the past lives I’ve already lived, without seeking a way back to them. 

I can recount every time that I was ready to see what comes after the gray line ends, but something always held me back. 

Secretly, I think I knew all along that there will always be something to learn and look forward to. And, now, I don’t think I’ll ever be quite ready for the afterlife. 

None of us are. 

“You sit in such judgment of the world. How do you expect to ever be a part of it?” 

I want to run a marathon, graduate college with my friends and pursue my uttermost hopes and dreams. I want to learn every possible thing the universe has to offer, and never give in to the static. 

In ‘The Life You Create, “Static”’ (Episode 5, Season 11) I sat and cried for 54 minutes straight. It was then that I realized this show is a right of passage on what it means to live and be a person in this world. 

There’s this feeling I get sometimes, and I know others feel it too. That feeling when you realize it’s just another day, and nothing really happened, and you didn’t really try to make anything happen. 

It’s when you have to stop listening to the static. 

“It just means that everything in the world is like this transmission, making its way across the dark. But everything - death, life, everything - it’s all completely suffused with static. You know? But, if you listen to the static too much, it fucks you up.” 

Sometimes choosing to move on; from a bad day, a bad person, death, is the only way out. It’s not easy, it’s not fun, but it's necessary or you’ll end up stuck in this endless soul-sucking loop which is honestly worse than death because you’re in it while living. 

Eventually it will be the end, and ‘Six Feet Under’ proves that those words shouldn’t be scary, they should motivate and enlighten us to make the most of our time on earth worth it. 

If you’re a living, breathing, being on this planet, I urge you to tune in to ‘Six Feet Under’ and especially if you’re just trying to make sense of the world around you. 

Because, focusing on the past will get you nowhere, and being a good person is impossible, but at least we have friends, family, or strangers facing the same fate as us. 

“I’m just saying, you only get one life. There’s no god, no rules, no judgments, except for those you accept or create for yourself. And once it’s over, it’s over. Dreamless sleep forever and ever. So, why not be happy while you’re here? Really. Why not?”