Faces appeared in the window above him.
The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much alike as reflections in a mirror.
“He saw us,” the woman said shrilly.
“So he did,” the man said.
Brans fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before you fall.”
Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked him up to the ledge. “What are you doing?” the woman demanded.
The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. “How old are you, boy?”
“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in the man’s forearm. He let go sheepishly.
The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.
Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet him.
I started watching GAME OF THRONES by accident in 2015. The hit HBO show was ready to kick-off its fifth season and I just happened to binge all of season four on a flu-ridden Sunday afternoon. I was mesmerized by the trial of Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) and the revenge-fueled bravery of Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal). I was frightened by Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) and all of his Darth Vader majesty, as well as his daughter, Cersei (Lena Headey), and the venom that poured from her eyes. I had to know how we got to this point.
I bought the novels and the Blu-rays and consumed all of it within a few weeks of the launch of season six. I was hooked. I understood the hype and why the series had millions of fans across the globe. I also understood the controversies that erupted each season. GAME OF THRONES was startling – not just in its depictions of violence and sexuality – but that nobody was safe. Not in a cheap shock value sort of way – although there was plenty of eye-opening trauma throughout its eight season run – but in a no-respecter-of-persons kind of way. THRONES always stayed true to its trajectory and its intended story, your heartstrings and feelings be damned.
Fast forward to 2020 – a year removed from the season eight finale – and I’m genuinely still lump-in-throat sad about THRONES coming to end. Not because the show wronged me in the way it ended the stories of my beloved TV friends from Westeros, but because it signals the end of something that has lingered in the background of my life as mileposts have clicked by.
My daughter went from barely having a driver’s license to wrapping up her second year of college.
My son went from a tiny middle schooler to a strapping almost 17 year-old man who stands a lot taller than his dad these days.
I’ve gone on trips, seen babies born, attended funerals, weddings, graduations and everything in between.
I was barely 40 when I started; now I’m almost 46.
Where does the time go?
And maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not the ending of THRONES that has me feeling melancholy, but rather the thumping of chapters closing in my life and and seeing more pages about to drop on the horizon. It’s the constant tick-tock of life’s clock. Nothing can stop it.
If I’m honest, I suppose I hate change. I think I always have. And the reason is simple: I know what I’ve had. I know how things are today. What I don’t know is what lies ahead.
Maybe – even though I’m thinking it, I’m not asking myself, “What if there’s never a show as glorious as GAME OF THRONES?” Maybe that’s a cover for what lies in my heart – raw and scared – which is, “What if my kids don’t want to spend time with me next year, or in five years, or in 20? What if when my kids move out, my wife and I look at each other and say who the hell are you? What if I never amount to the man I always thought I’d be – both in character and in success?” And don’t even get me started on the rear-view mirror thoughts I have right after. The “have I lived a good life” kind of musings that punctuate the misty-eyed lump-in-the-throat late night meditations that seem to flow freely over the last year, especially right after THRONES dropped the curtain for the final time.
But then, amidst all the clamor in my head, I take a step back and remember one of my favorite quotes about this journey all of us are on, from legendary humorist James Thurber (THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY), “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.”
That’s what makes GAME OF THRONES so epic. What makes the heroic moments stick and the sad moments sting. It’s love. It’s how the show begins, with Jamie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) telling his sister, Queen Cersei, as he pushes Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) out the tower window in Winterfell, “The things I do for love.” And it’s how the show ends, with Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) talking about love and duty. Jon quotes Aemon Targaryen (Peter Vaughn), his old maester at the Night’s Watch, “Love is the death of duty,” to which Tyrion responds, “Sometimes duty is the death of love.”
In the end, every character in GAME OF THRONES is moved, like a chess piece, knowingly or unknowingly, by the marionette strings of love. Major and minor characters do both heroic and terrible acts, all in the name of love. Love is what moves them and all of us. We’re either desperately trying to cling to love, or we’re searching for it. To quote Queen Cersei, “There is no middle ground.”
I mentioned Jamie Lannister sending Bran Stark out the window of the Broken Tower, but speaking of Winterfell and season one of GAME OF THRONES, this entire story – right from the get-go – spawned from love. From a promise made by a young Ned Stark (Sean Bean) to his dying sister, Lyanna (Aisling Franciosi), to protect her son and keep him safe, Ned besmirched his impeccable reputation by lying about the boy’s origins, telling everyone the baby was a bastard born during his fighting in Robert’s Rebellion. Ned took the hit – even broke his wife’s heart – to keep a promise to his sister and to keep her son safe. That’s love. It’s also love that moved Ned’s wife, Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), to ignite the War of the Five Kings to try protect her husband and children. And GAME OF THRONES fans know how all that turned out. Even Catelyn seemed to know where and what it all spawned from, telling Talisa Stark (Oona Chaplin) how she couldn’t love the child Ned brought back from the war; the child he told her was his bastard. “All this horror that’s come to my family,” she said, “it’s all because I couldn’t love a motherless child.”
The list doesn’t end with Ned and Catelyn. Robb Stark’s (Richard Madden) love of Talisa got most of the Stark clan butchered at the Red Wedding. Cersei’s deep love for her children led her to do unspeakable things, all born from a fear that without her children, she would have nothing. And as fear so often works, she got exactly what she didn’t want. She lost everything. If THRONES has taught me one thing, it’s sometimes love moves us to irrationality.
I don’t know what lies ahead. None of us do. But as I keep my eyes up and grasp and swing and claw at all the love and all moments I have left – like some life-sized version of Tetris – I can’t help but bring this all back to Bran, the boy who fell and who learned to fly. Bran asked his father, “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” Ned, full of integrity and wisdom said, “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
So that’s what I’ll do: Cherish the time. Embrace every moment. Pour out love.
And be brave.
The Things We Do For Love
The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much alike as reflections in a mirror.
“He saw us,” the woman said shrilly.
“So he did,” the man said.
Brans fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before you fall.”
Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked him up to the ledge. “What are you doing?” the woman demanded.
The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. “How old are you, boy?”
“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in the man’s forearm. He let go sheepishly.
The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.
Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet him.
I started watching GAME OF THRONES by accident in 2015. The hit HBO show was ready to kick-off its fifth season and I just happened to binge all of season four on a flu-ridden Sunday afternoon. I was mesmerized by the trial of Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) and the revenge-fueled bravery of Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal). I was frightened by Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) and all of his Darth Vader majesty, as well as his daughter, Cersei (Lena Headey), and the venom that poured from her eyes. I had to know how we got to this point.
I bought the novels and the Blu-rays and consumed all of it within a few weeks of the launch of season six. I was hooked. I understood the hype and why the series had millions of fans across the globe. I also understood the controversies that erupted each season. GAME OF THRONES was startling – not just in its depictions of violence and sexuality – but that nobody was safe. Not in a cheap shock value sort of way – although there was plenty of eye-opening trauma throughout its eight season run – but in a no-respecter-of-persons kind of way. THRONES always stayed true to its trajectory and its intended story, your heartstrings and feelings be damned.
Fast forward to 2020 – a year removed from the season eight finale – and I’m genuinely still lump-in-throat sad about THRONES coming to end. Not because the show wronged me in the way it ended the stories of my beloved TV friends from Westeros, but because it signals the end of something that has lingered in the background of my life as mileposts have clicked by.
My daughter went from barely having a driver’s license to wrapping up her second year of college.
My son went from a tiny middle schooler to a strapping almost 17 year-old man who stands a lot taller than his dad these days.
I’ve gone on trips, seen babies born, attended funerals, weddings, graduations and everything in between.
I was barely 40 when I started; now I’m almost 46.
Where does the time go?
And maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not the ending of THRONES that has me feeling melancholy, but rather the thumping of chapters closing in my life and and seeing more pages about to drop on the horizon. It’s the constant tick-tock of life’s clock. Nothing can stop it.
If I’m honest, I suppose I hate change. I think I always have. And the reason is simple: I know what I’ve had. I know how things are today. What I don’t know is what lies ahead.
Maybe – even though I’m thinking it, I’m not asking myself, “What if there’s never a show as glorious as GAME OF THRONES?” Maybe that’s a cover for what lies in my heart – raw and scared – which is, “What if my kids don’t want to spend time with me next year, or in five years, or in 20? What if when my kids move out, my wife and I look at each other and say who the hell are you? What if I never amount to the man I always thought I’d be – both in character and in success?” And don’t even get me started on the rear-view mirror thoughts I have right after. The “have I lived a good life” kind of musings that punctuate the misty-eyed lump-in-the-throat late night meditations that seem to flow freely over the last year, especially right after THRONES dropped the curtain for the final time.
But then, amidst all the clamor in my head, I take a step back and remember one of my favorite quotes about this journey all of us are on, from legendary humorist James Thurber (THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY), “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.”
That’s what makes GAME OF THRONES so epic. What makes the heroic moments stick and the sad moments sting. It’s love. It’s how the show begins, with Jamie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) telling his sister, Queen Cersei, as he pushes Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) out the tower window in Winterfell, “The things I do for love.” And it’s how the show ends, with Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) talking about love and duty. Jon quotes Aemon Targaryen (Peter Vaughn), his old maester at the Night’s Watch, “Love is the death of duty,” to which Tyrion responds, “Sometimes duty is the death of love.”
In the end, every character in GAME OF THRONES is moved, like a chess piece, knowingly or unknowingly, by the marionette strings of love. Major and minor characters do both heroic and terrible acts, all in the name of love. Love is what moves them and all of us. We’re either desperately trying to cling to love, or we’re searching for it. To quote Queen Cersei, “There is no middle ground.”
I mentioned Jamie Lannister sending Bran Stark out the window of the Broken Tower, but speaking of Winterfell and season one of GAME OF THRONES, this entire story – right from the get-go – spawned from love. From a promise made by a young Ned Stark (Sean Bean) to his dying sister, Lyanna (Aisling Franciosi), to protect her son and keep him safe, Ned besmirched his impeccable reputation by lying about the boy’s origins, telling everyone the baby was a bastard born during his fighting in Robert’s Rebellion. Ned took the hit – even broke his wife’s heart – to keep a promise to his sister and to keep her son safe. That’s love. It’s also love that moved Ned’s wife, Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), to ignite the War of the Five Kings to try protect her husband and children. And GAME OF THRONES fans know how all that turned out. Even Catelyn seemed to know where and what it all spawned from, telling Talisa Stark (Oona Chaplin) how she couldn’t love the child Ned brought back from the war; the child he told her was his bastard. “All this horror that’s come to my family,” she said, “it’s all because I couldn’t love a motherless child.”
The list doesn’t end with Ned and Catelyn. Robb Stark’s (Richard Madden) love of Talisa got most of the Stark clan butchered at the Red Wedding. Cersei’s deep love for her children led her to do unspeakable things, all born from a fear that without her children, she would have nothing. And as fear so often works, she got exactly what she didn’t want. She lost everything. If THRONES has taught me one thing, it’s sometimes love moves us to irrationality.
I don’t know what lies ahead. None of us do. But as I keep my eyes up and grasp and swing and claw at all the love and all moments I have left – like some life-sized version of Tetris – I can’t help but bring this all back to Bran, the boy who fell and who learned to fly. Bran asked his father, “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” Ned, full of integrity and wisdom said, “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
So that’s what I’ll do: Cherish the time. Embrace every moment. Pour out love.
And be brave.