An open letter to John Stamos

This came to me on a walk in the rain, the day after I finished the last episode of the last season of a Full House rewatch. (I seem to like this letter-writing prompt.)

…

Dear John,

Last night I finished rewatching Full House for perhaps the 8th or 9th time in my 36 years.

Every time I watch, I find something new.

The last time, a few years ago when I was stuck in the middle of a book I was writing and thought about giving it up, the thing I noticed most was how your character never gave up on his music dream even though he wanted to give up so many times, tried to give up even.

I tried so many times to give up.

It never stuck.

You helped.

So did the line in the theme song, “Kid don’t sell your dreams so soon.”

The week Bob died I tried to rewatch it again, to remember, to help deal with this odd sadness at the news I couldn’t place; it was different this time.

We feel a certain way when artists who make something we love leave the world.

This was the worst I ever felt.

I watched only about half of the first episode and then had to stop. It wasn’t helping. I’d never felt this sad watching before, and I often watched it when I was feeling sad and needed a lift. It wasn’t lifting this time.

But a few months ago, I decided to try again.

As always, this time, I saw something new.

It happened on Season 3, Episode 15.

Danny tries to do Stephanie’s dance routine and when he finishes to wait for your reaction you are silent from 6:10 until 6:17. It seems as if you are holding in an explosive kind of laughter, trying to stay in character, trying not to laugh the way you would if the cameras weren’t there.

You say your line.

And then from 6:21-6:22 you both give each other a look that, had I not already heard once that you two were good friends in real life, would have revealed your IRL friendship to be an absolute fact.

I rewind to 6:10. I watch again.

One more time.

I rewind again.

I call my husband in. “Watch this,” I say.

I don’t have to explain. He sees it too: the inexplicable evidence of real friendship.

I was having lunch with a friend a few weeks ago and shared a little bit about how crazy I felt that in the next month I would be moving just 2 days after I would get back from an MFA residency in Pennsylvania—just a few days after graduating. What was I thinking? I wondered. I was on the verge of overwhelm, burnout.

“It’s kind of cool though,” he said, “that you’ll have this physical change to kind of mirror this big life change.”

Just like that, I stopped feeling overwhelmed. I didn’t burnout. I saw something I’d been turning over in my head for months anew.

On my drive home from that lunch I realized I hadn’t talked to a friend in person in weeks. I’d had a book come out (that I’d worked on for 9 years!) just weeks prior and I hadn’t talked to a single friend in person about it. Texts, DMs, and Zoom’s oh my. But I was kind of shocked. How did I let that happen?

It was then I realized I wasn’t sitting across from friends at tables IRL enough. Working remotely can do that to you.

I realized it was going to take more effort, but that 6:10-6:22 moments are worth it, to really see them and let them see me: when they make me laugh, make me break, and keep me from breaking.

We tend to unconsciously de-prioritize time with friends as we get older. It’s the thing we squeeze into the margins, and the first thing to go when the margins disappear, as they often do.

Yet every time I leave a conversation with a friend I’m reminded of why it’s worth the effort, reminded how backwards it is I don’t prioritize something that gives me so much.

My friends comfort me, reflect my life back to me, help me see what I can’t when I’m too close, help me feel proud when I’m too hard on myself, help me celebrate before I keep going, help me remember who I am when I’ve forgotten.

And, for me at least, my best friends are the ones who make me laugh. Laugh until I cry. Laugh until it hurts. Laugh until I fall to my knees on a sidewalk. Laugh in a way that almost makes you forget you are in front of a live studio audience.

I started my first ever Fuller House rewatch last night, right after the last episode of Full House finished. Do you remember the last lines in the last episode of the last season? They went like this:

”But we stuck it out and we got through it.” - You

“Just like we ways do.” - Dave

“Just like we always will.” - Bob

Fuller House begins with you and Bob in the same-ish kitchen. From 1:00 to 1:05 you both just kind of smile at each other, in a way I recognize from Season 3, Episode 15.

I’ve never lost a friend.

I don’t know what it’s like to not have that kind of person in your life after having that kind of person in your life.

The closest thing I can come to imagining it is thinking about the way it felt to lose a family member, how cruel it felt to lose all the future conversations and laughs we were supposed to have. That, coupled with how it feels to think about Season 1, Episode 13 of one of my friendships, when three of us used to meet every Monday at a Thai food restaurant and talk, and laugh, for 3-4 hours. I would sometimes order two meals (Thai fried rice and then Panang curry, both medium spicy).

I remember looking around in the dark restaurant once and somehow knowing, knowing, that this was special, one of the best things life had to offer, and that it wouldn’t last forever.

But I am lucky. All of my friends who make me laugh are still here. I can still text them anytime I see something that reminds me of one of our inside jokes, or when I need to feel less alone.

I don’t ever want to know what it’s like to lose that. I don’t want to know.

I would say it’s a guarantee that one day I will know, but, I guess, the only way I won’t is if I go first.

Someone has to be first.

The rest have to learn how to live without that particular brand of new laughter. One less person to ask for help. One less person whose eyes you loved and asked for.

The rest have to learn how to hold onto the old, hold the text in their stomach, the inside joke in their wrist.

Bob died a few miles from where I live.

That and watching a show is not the same as knowing him, not the same as being someone’s friend. Not even close, really.

Except.

He did make me laugh.

Brought me comfort in the worst of times.

You did too.

The characters you played, sure. But also, who would those characters be without what you brought to them? What your friendship brought to them?

We don’t know the people we see on screens, we are not the same as friends, not even close.

Except.

People on screens still affect other people like friends do, even if it’s only a one-way street.

All that to say, I know I don’t know you or Bob.

But for a brief moment, I saw the love you shared peek out, a moment of real life, a moment that can’t be acted or written.

I don’t know the level of broken that happens when that is gone. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be first but I also don’t want to know.

All I can hope is that maybe even the full-on breaking, the kind that comes with loss not laughter, also unlocks the place without the cameras, the things no one else saw or shared, that they find a way to be rewatched, that you are able to notice something new each time.