'Good Grief' Is The Movie I Wish I’d Had After My Mom Died

The elevator doors opened to reveal a woman who also appeared to be in her mid-20s. Pausing for her to step out, I noticed that she was wearing a button pinned on her shirt. It read, “Be kind to me. I’m grieving.”

As she moved past me, I wanted to stop her. I wanted to reach out with a gesture or words that would capture her attention. I wanted to let her know that I understood, to explain that my mom had died earlier that year, to tell her that I knew what it was to grieve. But before I had the chance, she was walking across the lobby and through the building’s automatic doors, so I stepped into the elevator, thinking about the loss I always carried with me and wondering what it felt like for her to carry a loss too.

At that time, my grief was still so fresh and so heavy. It was still hard to put it into words, to make others understand, and, as the elevator rose, I remember envying that stranger’s button, the way she so easily communicated to the rest of the world that her world had been forever changed. I needed to be able to do that, to help others to see my grief. I didn’t know if it would lessen the weight of it, but I thought that it might make it feel less consuming. Maybe it would help me process what the rest of my life would look like without my mom in it. Maybe doing so would be able to make me feel less alone.

Dan Levy’s new Netflix film, “Good Grief,” which he wrote, produced, directed and stars in, does all of the things that I wished I could have done for myself back then; it makes grief tangible.

The movie opens as if it’s a holiday film instead of a drama. Ella Fitzgerald’s “Sleigh Ride” plays as the first shot, a beautiful London townhouse decorated for Christmas and filled with people, appears on