Good-bye ER

Call it, time of death, 11pm, EST, Thursday April 2, 2009. One of my favorite shows, ER, is over. I am sad. I am very sad. I am very very sad.

I have been watching ER from the beginning. I remember exactly how I got into the show, it was my senior year of high school, in AP Biology, my first period class. My lab partner, Samantha was a big fan of the show. She would talk about the last night episode, the next morning. She wanted to be a doctor, which is how she got into ER. With so much of her praise I couldn't help but be convinced to give the show a try. The first ER episode I watched - "Loves Labor Lost." A powerful moving episode that had me crying in the end. I was hooked.

I went off to college and formed an even stronger bond with the show, how I made friends in my first year at Mary Baldwin College (this mutual love of ER), I would block off Thursday evening for this Must See TV, going downstairs from my third floor room, to watch in a crowded second floor lounge. My friend H and I would not miss any episode. It was like that for the four years we went to MBC together, us watching the show together in whatever dorm lounge we lived in, arguing over characters (she didn't like Kerry, I did, I was in love with Dr. Carter, she was not) and crying over the patients that died.

This television show has been with me through thick and thin. I have watched it every single year, following the characters, their lives. At times watching ER was the only thing I had to look forward too on a Thursday. I loved how by 10pm, everyone in my house would be asleep and it would just be me downstairs, in the soft lite family room, curled up on the sofa, with a cup of tea and a warm blanket, immersed in this imaginary world of a fictious Chicago hosiptal.

There are so many memories I will take with me, with this shows passing, the crying over Dr. Green's death, the laughing at Gerry's antics, the shock of the season finale when Dr. Carter and Lucy the intern are stabbed, the disbelief at Abby getting kidnaped by some gang, the being moved by Kovaj's foray into war torn Congo, the hilarity of Dr. Morse's love life, the cuteness of the new Australian doctor and Ray, the jealousy of them both being Neela's love interests and the craziness of all the hundreds of stories the filled up the fifteen years of episodes of ER, from the brother honor killing his sister to the prostitute who uses ginseng which negates her birth control, all outlandish, weird, bizarre, suspenseful stories. And through it all I knew ER and its writers would keep me on the edge of my seat every Thursday night at 1opm (even in those last few seasons when I could call which patient would die at the start of the show and how I would vow not to cry and inevitably those damn ER writers would get me again in tears at 11pm at night).

Goodbye to you my old friend, you will be missed.