An Open Letter to Ted Lasso with Some Gosh-Darn Hard Questions for the Upcoming Season

Dear Ted Lasso,

With your new season coming out, I thought you’d like some storyline advice from a non-Emmy-winning, suicide-surviving, journaling-through-the-pain, amateur writer mom. We can be pent-up-feelings pals.

I’m beyond grateful that in the first three seasons, you and the army of emotionally courageous people constructing you were willing to share that your father died by suicide. That big reveal in season 2 changed my life, and the life of my Hotspurs-loving preteen son, whose father died the same way yours did two years before that episode aired.

I have to tell you, because I morbidly dove down this rabbit hole not long after my husband passed, that the character in most movies whose parent unalived themself is the character holding the bloody knife. The one who is decidedly effed up. So thank you for putting a new slaphappy, mustachioed face on this particularly complex level of trauma survival. I used to hate mustaches.

But you left something out. You forgot to include the weighty user’s manual explaining how you went from the chipmunk-cheeked teenager who walked in on his dad’s self-inflicted carnage to the doggedly compassionate father, coach, and friend you became. I need to know the torturous moments that came in between. I have three kids who do, too.

And so I have some questions for you.

I get that you were angry with your mom for pretending life was okay after your father’s death, but how much talking about it did you want her to do? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Would you rather that she only bring him up in sad moments? Maybe when you lost a game or tore an ACL?

Perhaps a safer time for a mention would be after a game-winning goal? Or would that be a downer? If she tossed out a quick “Boy, Daddy would be proud” comment as you Freddie Mercury-ed your way through “We Are the Champions,” would that bite the dust?

Would you have preferred a text message instead? Maybe an “OMG ur irl da GOAT” trying to mimic your father’s playful attempts at teen slang. Or would your mom’s dad joke have been a clunker?

If she did brave the conversation, should she have used a solemn tone, or would that seem weird since your dad was such a gregarious guy? Maybe a soft smile to make sure you knew she still had good feelings for your dad, but not so toothy that you thought she didn’t care. How hard it must have been for her to read the room and write the script all at the same time.

What about the bigger occasions like your graduation or your wedding? Did you want your mom to mention him then? Maybe something on the shallow end of deep, such as “Your dad always dreamed of this day”? Or would that kill the mood? Maybe she should write a touching message on a card instead. Or wrap a meaningful gift from a place you two visited together. Would a ghost-given present creep you out?

Did it make you uncomfortable for her to mention your dad when your friends were around? Did it make them uncomfortable? Maybe if she kept mental track of the ones who already knew how your dad died, she would not reveal some unexpected truth on the way to club practice.

Did your mother feel the need to represent your father’s opinion in your life? Play both good cop and bad cop. Did that make her feel split in half to the point of almost breaking?

Did your mom share her favorite parts of your father? The way he would listen to her tearful retelling of some hard decision at work and say all the right things to make her feel strong and sure again. Would hearing these special moments, the things that only she, and then you, would know about, make you feel closer to him or sadder for him?

Should she share her least favorite parts of your father? The cracks she saw in his surface. Not the big ones that split your lives apart, but the little ones that were happening all along. That happen to all people all along. Like his compulsive need to eliminate food waste by eating every seed, core, stem, rind, or stalk. Would that make you love or fear dragonfruit?

I heard you, Ted. I heard you tell your mother that you wanted her to talk about the hard truth of your father’s death. And I’m right there with you. Airing the reality of mental health struggles is vital. People die when we don’t. Talking about depression would have helped your father. It would have helped my son’s father. But dang, that’s a tough lifetime of conversations. And I’m afraid the montage version of your upbringing has left me with too many questions. I understand that you and your dozens of astoundingly talented storytelling friends have moved on to new projects, new topics, new problems to solve. But some of us are still grappling with the old one. The monstrously difficult-to-survive one.

And we could use some award-winning help figuring it out.

Sincerely,
Pam