Takedown. Adjective: “made or constructed so as to be easily dismantled or disassembled.” Noun: “Wrestling. a move or series of maneuvers that succeeds in bringing a standing opponent down on the mat.”
Some years back I lost my father to illness…and while the way in which my father passed is not represented in the same way here in this play, when he was in his last moments, I simply did not know what to do, nor what to feel. I was all over the place - with both my feelings, sitting by his side or roaming the halls of that hospital like some kind of lab mouse, trying to figure out this thing that was coming, called “death”…at one particular point, within final days, a shift occurred where I could not “get through” to my father, he was no longer responding to my voice. Confused, I jumped up and ran to his nurse, pleading with her, “is he okay….can my dad hear me when I speak to him?” She looked at me, with her eyes of calmness, placed her hands on my shoulders and held me, “probably, but Jeffrey, dying is a part of living.” Suddenly in that moment, for whatever reason, I heard words that helped me accept the imminent.
I recently watched the mini-series “Painkiller” as I could never really understand how a pill (or pills) could eventually kill a person. Call me naïve, but in the past, it just wasn't something I wanted to know too much about. My central question - was death a slow and painful thing or immediate? “Takedown” forced my hand - and my eyes - to watch and what I came to learn is that while there was no one way, the opioid epidemic was and still is – horrific, and took and continues to take down people, families and communities.
“Takedown” speaks to this thing we are all experiencing on this planet - life. And how we can forget just how precious and fragile it is. Life. Love. Loss. Sometimes we just simply forget to be conscious about love – and fear can creep in and literally hijack our very ability to love. It is about the secrets - hidden - and how, love, through loss, can potentially win over to pave the way and allow for the darkness to be revealed so that love can connect us, yet once again.
We don’t know when loss will come. So, let us try to choose love.
Thank you for coming.
JD Glickman
