One Final Life Lesson From How I Met Your Mother

The How I Met Your Mother episode that meant the most to me this final season was the "Gary Blauman" episode.  My favorite was "How Your Mother Met Me," as it gave Cristen Milioti a chance to shine.  I don't want to talk about the finale, as I'm still processing its last 10 minutes.  I want to talk about how a seemingly filler episode like "Gary Blauman" is proof that the HIMYM writers have been spying on me for 9 years.

HIMYM was my Friends.  I was too young to truly understand the latter's dynamic when it originally aired, but I was right in HIMYM's demographic when it premiered in 2005.  It starred some of my favorite actors from my favorite shows (Buffy, Freaks & Geeks, and Doogie shout outs!), and there were quite a few episodes and moments that just mirrored my life.  I watched the show faithfully for 9 years.  Sure, there were times when some episodes built up on the DVR (especially in the last few years), but I always caught up.  My last car was named Marshmallow, and my current car is named Lilypad.  That's my level of devotion to the characters.  I found the idea of the 9th season being primarily set in Barney and Robin's wedding weekend to be interesting, and I went back to watching faithfully on Monday nights, especially since I wanted to be on top of all the moments with the revealed mother.

I wept at the end of the "Gary Blauman" episode.  I forgot that Gary Blauman was the name of Taran Killam's recurring character, and I got emotional to see everyone's husbands get a send-off with other featured players:  Killam (Cobie Smulders), Alexis Denisof as Sandy Rivers (Alyson Hannigan), and David Burtka as Scooter (Neil Patrick Harris).  The continuing long shot of everyone's future was really well done.

However, that's not what sent me over the edge.  I went back and transcribed this entire moment after Blauman blew up at the group and stormed out.  

SCENE

Barney:  Blauman will cool off eventually, we’ll see him again

Ted:  Of course we will.

Marshall:  I don’t know…I mean, we might really never see him again.  Listen, I remember at our wedding, looking around thinking, 'Man everyone here means so much to me.' A bunch of those people…yeah, I haven’t seen them since.

Narrator Ted:  And that’s how it goes kids.  The friends, neighbors, drinking buddies, and partners in crime you loved so much when you’re young.  As the years go by, you just lose touch.  That being said, I did manage to keep track of a few people. 

You will be shocked, kids, when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever. That’s why when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it.

END SCENE

Our second wedding anniversary was just this past Monday.  The wedding itself feels like yesterday, but things are starting to fade a bit more.  I'm actually quite glad I waited so long to do the wedding album because now I can go through and relive so many wonderful memories.  I remember sitting at our sweetheart table during dinner and just looking around the entire room.  I tried to soak in that moment as deeply as I could.  "These people are all here for us.  These people love us and want to see us succeed in our life.  And these people will never all be in the same room together ever again."  It was a sobering thought, and I just made sure to have the time of my life for the next couple hours.  

There are people from our wedding that I have seen intermittently over the past couple years, there are some I will most likely never see again.  There are some who became even closer to us.  There are new people in our lives that we think, Aw man, wish we had known them at the time of our kick ass wedding.  There are people that, as Robin said in the finale episode, are only going to be around for "the big things."  As much as that breaks my heart, I understand it's a part of life.  It's a shitty part of life, she types while huge tears fall down her cheeks, but it's life.  

As Blink-182 sang so memorably at the end of Can't Hardly Wait, "Well I guess this is growing up."

And it hurts.  You want to cling onto everyone and freeze frame those wonderful moments in your life.  But it passes, and life changes, and you're not the same person you were 2 years ago, or even 6 months ago.  It doesn't mean you care any less for these people and the impact they made on your life.  It's wonderful to be able to flip through an album and see so many different groups of people from different time periods of your life celebrating together.  

I want to focus on getting our life in order and stable.  I want us to live a long happy life together.  And I will love those people, "old" and "new," who are there for us.  And I will never forget anybody who made an impact on my life, whether they were at our wedding or not.  People come in and out of your life for a reason.