If you haven't seen Mary Poppins Returns, this post will have some spoilers. I watched this film for the second time over the weekend with my daughter. There is quite a lot about death and many many euphemisms used in the film, but one particular scene struck me upon second viewing. The song in which Ben Whishaw's character Michael Banks is mourning his wife (pic from IMDB). In the song he ponders how to answer questions from his kids, and wishes for suggestions on hairstyling for his daughter. He ends this song with "My question, Kate, is where'd you go?" Although the many euphemisms in this children's film have rubbed me the wrong way in the past, this particular scene is very touching. I think the point of it is to say that it is the everyday activities that are hardest when someone in our lives has died.
We miss the normalcy and the mundane. It's about the items a person has used every day without ceremony, rather than something that may have been saved for special occasions. And it's in the everyday, that we miss the deceased the most.
As colleagues, service-providers, and acquaintances to the bereft in our professional lives, seeking out empathy in mundane moments may be the most meaningful act we could offer.
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