What 'The Body' means to me

The Body is the 16th Episode from the 5th Season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and it’s a tough one. I’ve been watching and rewatching Buffy a few times now and the moment this episode is on I turn into an emotional wreck. For me, this episode is one of the best hour of TV EVER!

The short version, this episode is about death and the bleakness of it. I’m sure you can find tons of articles online about this episode where way better and more gifted writers and psychologists write about this episode. That’s not what I want to do here, but I want to put my thoughts down about what this episode means to me shortly after I’ve seen it.

I didn’t come into contact with death much yet, thank you for that. But there’s one incident which broke me. In May of 2013, I came home, slightly drunk from a club when I found my cat Cosmo lying on the floor, motionless. I closed the door behind me and kneeled down to pet him when I realized he’s hard and stiff and didn’t move.

The realization of him being dead broke me, literally and figuratively. I broke down crying and screaming at him to stand up but he didn’t move. I laid there next to him, talking to him and in some way saying my goodbyes. What followed were tough 24 hours in which the whole family came by to say goodbye before we brought him to a vet.

The Body perfectly captures these first hours and for me, it’s always a reminder of what I went through back in May of 2013.

I still miss you Comso…