Every now and then a work of art is a produced and it feels as though it was created with you in mind. You know what I mean? This is is how I feel about HBO’s The Leftovers. A sweeping story about grief, The Leftovers came into my life right when I needed it. If the first season prepared me for what was to come, the two seasons that followed helped me make sense of it all in real time.

The premise of The Leftovers asks us to imagine what things would be like if 2% of the Earth’s population (about 140 million people) had just disappeared into thin air. Entire families, gone. Beloved celebrities? Kiss Shaq, Gary Busey, Anthony Bourdain, and the principle cast of Perfect Strangers goodbye! How would survivors respond to this, especially in the long term? Whether you lost your entire family or not during the Sudden Departure (this is what they call the event), just knowing this kind of thing is possible is nothing short of a mindfuck. It reminds me of something someone said to me after my father passed away (his departure was sudden). “Feels like the earth cracked in half and you’re the only one that noticed.” I’ve always found this to be a perfect description of the early stages of grief. Where The Leftovers differs from my own experience is that it forces a collective grieving process of mass proportion. Now everyone doesn’t know what to make of the world and they have questions. Lots of them.

I lost my father and my girlfriend only about a year or so apart. Suffice to say, I had questions. Who’s pulling the strings? Who’d do this to me? Who’d do this to them? What is my purpose? Was I put here to simply love and lose over and over? Perhaps the most important question, as well as the most mysterious: What will the rest of my life be like?

We’re just full of questions, aren’t we? The Leftovers chooses not to answer most of them, preferring to let the mystery be more times than not. It’s more concerned with exploring how we deal with grief, whether or not seemingly broken people can find each other, lose each other, and find each other again, if this quixotic pursuit we call life is really all that worth it.

The answer to that last question is obviously yes. There’s a scene in the show’s third season where it is suggested to a character that he is depressed and suicidal. His response:

“What happened was arbitrary. It was purposeless. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. So no, Nora, I don’t want to kill myself. I want to take some fuckin’ control.”

Hearing this helped a lot. Everyone who is mourning and missing someone should hear these words. This show didn’t answer much but it did tell me that it was ok that I felt despondent and it helped me discover a different way to think about my grief. At my lowest it might felt like I wanted to die, but I really just wanted to figure this all out.

I’ve purposely decided not to reference the show’s main characters, Kevin and Nora. Their story is ultimately one about our willingness to love one another in light of a shared sadness. It’s about overcoming the obstacles put there either by life of ourselves. That is a story that has yet to be written for me. Maybe it never will. I’d love to know the answer to that but some things are supposed to be a mystery. I’ll choose to let this one be.