May Fifteenth

Frasier Season 11, Episode 23, Goodnight Seattle 1

Martin: Why would I randomly pick a...? [realizes] Oh, no.
Frasier: What?
Martin: May 15th — Eddie's birthday.
…
Frasier Season 11, Episode 24, Goodnight Seattle 2

Niles: And, you will always remember your anniversary, because it's
the same day as your grandson's birthday.
Martin: Yeah, and Eddie's!
Ronee: What?

Frasier and Niles freeze.

Martin: Uh, never mind.
Ronee: Eddie's birthday is today? So that's how you came up with May
15th for the hotel?
Martin: Uh...
Ronee: I knew it! And you've been blaming the inn all this time —
oh, you are so busted!
…
May 15th has been one of those important dates on the calendar for my whole life. It’s my Mum’s birthday. As someone who never much cared for ‘shop bought cakes’, and blessed with a husband and daughter who weren’t any good at baking, Mum always had to make her own birthday cake. She’d grumble about it, but she’d always enjoy the celebrations and the ritual singing of Happy Birthday To You, even if she did complain that it meant that we were all getting older. Her last two birthdays were celebrated in the Care Home where she lived – first with cards and presents, hugs and kisses from all of us; later with a cake and three cheers from the nurses, care assistants and other residents. She seemed to love the excitement, even if she didn’t always quite take in that she was the birthday girl. For about ten years before that, all family birthdays were transported north from Belfast to our house on the coast. Mum changed her ideas and a M&S Victoria Sponge, with candles, became our tradition. We recently found the photo album from Mum’s eightieth birthday, and it was life-affirming to notice how happy, relaxed and beautiful she looked – she could easily have passed for ten years younger than she was.

May 15th this year has been one of those strange days; the first birthday which Mum wasn’t here any more to celebrate. How I wish I’d been perched on the uncomfortable arm of her chair in the Care Home, opening her presents for her and showing her items which she could no longer really identify as being new. How I wish I could have given her a hug. But there are comforts. There was the beautiful birdsong when I put some red geraniums on her grave – reminiscent of how much she used to love spending time in the garden, looking after brightly coloured flowers. The busy day at work certainly helped. Lunchtime chat with friends at work about nothing of any great consequence has never been so welcome as in the last three months. The times when my students have made me laugh have probably helped me to survive. This morning, I was working with some primary school pupils who may apply to our school in the year ahead. We were talking about names, and how we got our names, and what they mean – a preliminary to writing acrostic poems. Was anyone named after someone special, I asked. There were tales of grandparents and great aunts and even a character from Star Wars. A hand shot up in the back row. ‘Miss, I’m named after my Uncle Tom,’ said a brightly-smiling boy. ‘My Uncle Tom’s called Tom, and so am I.’ The best line of the day by far, especially as I could just imagine how heartily my Mum would have laughed at it. ‘My Uncle Tom’s called Tom as well,’ I told Tom in the back row, and on we went.

Frasier is almost certainly my all-time favourite television programme. No matter how many times I watch the seasons through, I will always find the humour funny, the genuine pathos moving, and the end of the final episode will always move me to tears. Frasier is meant to be a satire of two ultra-clever psychiatrists who have less wisdom about human beings and life than their retired cop father and his trusted Jack Russell terrier: and it is, and it’s funny, and it’s insightful, and clever, and all those wonderful things. But Frasier is a love story as well: an incredible, moving love story which encompasses everything from dating to isolation to marriage to friendship to brothers to parents and children to the very nature of love itself. In the final two episodes, Goodnight Seattle 1&2, all the characters have been paired off, just like at the end of a Shakespearean comedy. Niles and Daphne are having their first child. Martin and Ronee are getting married. Roz and Roger are back together. Frasier is in love with Charlotte and is about to take a massive leap to be with her in Chicago, leaving everything in Seattle far behind. Martin has accidentally booked the wrong date for his wedding to Ronee: May 15th. He knew that date was important for some reason… assuming it was the date she’d told him to book. Only suddenly she tells him no, she told him July 15th… he muses about why he’d picked the wrong date and been so sure, and then it comes to him. ‘May 15th. Eddie’s birthday’.

Eddie is the constant of Frasier: the trusted Jack Russell terrier who never lets Martin down. We have to suspend disbelief a bit as viewers: midway through, round about Season 8, the original terrier playing Eddie, Moose, retires, and is replaced by his own son, Enzo; we know that what seems like a dog who is in a deeply-considered relationship with Martin is actually just very cleverly trained. But Eddie is always there. In the episode when Roz’s daughter Alice’s hamster dies, and Martin explains to her about hamster heaven, the heartbreaking closing shot shows him hugging Eddie at the very thought that he’s not a puppy any more and one day might have to go to animal heaven too. It’s written with the lightest touch, but it’s clear that the companionship with Eddie has helped Martin through the loss of Hester, his first wife, and so much more. So it’s actually quite fitting that Martin and Ronee get married on May 15th, and that Niles and Daphne’s son is born on that same date. Because May 15th leads back to Eddie, and the love between Martin and Eddie is the touchstone of faithful companionship for all the loves and friendships in the programme’s eleven seasons. When John Mahoney, who played Martin, passed away in January, one of the most moving tributes I saw was a cartoon of Eddie sitting on Martin’s distinctive recliner, lead in his mouth, waiting for him: at least one of the dogs who played Eddie is now also deceased. It’s comforting to imagine two great friends reunited somewhere.

In the very last scene of the very last episode, Frasier makes his final KACL radio broadcast, saying goodbye to his colleagues and his listeners. He quotes from Tennyson’s Ulysses, which just happens to be one of my favourite poems.

‘....................and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are...
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’

I was reminded of this moment a couple of weeks ago, when BBC presenter Chris Evans’ mother passed away, and his colleague Vassos Alexander read out a statement from him to explain his absence. He talked about how his ‘Mum needed to be at peace’ and that her death was ‘ok, very ok’ and a release from illness. This resonates with me. My Mum may not be able to have any more birthdays, but she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s any more. The terrible frustrations of her illness have gone. We remember her when she was ill, but it’s easier now than it was when she was suffering to look back and remember her when she was well – when she was full of life, telling us off, keeping us in line, refusing to have anything to do with shop-bought cake. Chris Evans has been very brave and stoical about his Mum’s death, returning to his radio programme the very next day, but I’m sure he has those moments when he simply misses her. ‘That which we are, we are’: we can’t always be bright and strong.

Even when she’d been ‘made weak by time and fate,’ my Mum was always ‘strong in will’, right until her final night. May 15th will always be a touchstone of my calendar, just like Eddie’s birthday was for Martin Crane. As Frasier comments in his last KACL broadcast, ‘In the end, what we regret most are the chances we never took’. I might not feel like having birthday cake, but I’ll certainly take every chance there is to celebrate Mum’s life, on her birthday and every other day.