Bhavna

I just finished watching Beyond Goodbye or Sayonara no Tsuzuki and I was in a puddle of tears by the end. The thing is, what made me cry is not just that people die, but the depth, love, beauty, and sacredness that this J drama brought into the topic- it’s like something about it touches me so deeply that it brings me to tears. In the very first episode, when Yusuke was playing “I Want You Back” on the piano, and that scene repeats in variations two more times in the same setting, it touched me and I could feel the tears even in the first episode. I can’t explain it or why. And then as the series went on, Naruse, talking about how his own heart had reached its limit and so Yusuke’s boundless love and joy came into him to breathe new life into him, and how he was opened by it and it felt like the divine love of Spirit is just pouring through him and the whole series. What seemed at first as a love that was contained only in Yusuke, in the end was released from all forms and showed up everywhere. That’s what was so beautiful- it showed that forms are impermanent, but the love can melt anyone’s heart and dissolve conflicts and divisions, even if they’re not supposed to get along according to the world. I loved how emotionally honest and open the characters were in this J Drama compared to others that I’ve seen, and they expressed what was on their heart instead of holding everything in and that certainly helped to move the story along. The bond explored between Naruse and Saeko was truly something beyond words, beyond labels. It wasn’t “an affair,” in the classic sense although it could have turned into that. Neither party was looking for that, as noble as they were, and yet the love of Spirit brought them together in beautiful moments, to feel the divine love of God that wants nothing more than to see you happy and smiling, and never sad. That whole piano song of Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”, was the premise- it was the vehicle to deliver this message from Spirit to lift one up- the world is not so heavy and low, so smile. The whole series, the whole point of Yusuke’s existence as the symbol of love was to see that smile on Saeko’s face, and to wash away the tears of her sorrows. And this is the hidden message of the whole drama- to allow Spirit to wash away the grief of our sorrows and to bring the smile of God to our face, knowing that we are loved. “You are loved.” No matter what the loss, and how big the loss, even in the midst of it, in the heaviness of grief, “You are loved no matter what.” This is what the series points to. And love is bigger than all the people and forms in this world- it can appear as a rainbow, or berries on a plant, or a new life in someone’s womb. If you keep your heart open, even in the grief of loss, the Spirit will show you love and heal you from the inside out. That’s what this series did for me. It had a profound healing effect when I was going through my own losses and I allowed my heart to be opened up by this story.

The rewatch value of this series is high- the first 5 or so episodes are amazing. But at some point, it starts to drag a little, and the low point was when Saeko encounters a bear and ends up on the news … like why? That was so unnecessary. They could have cut that whole part out. But I’ll be forgiving and still say it’s one of the best J Dramas I’ve ever watched (I feel this way after watching each one, that every Japanese drama is even better than the last!).