The Few Last Grains Must One Day Fall: Notes on the Passing of Days of Our Lives’ Frances Reid

There are some deaths of cultural figures that I would never expect to feel in a deeply personal way, until they actually happen.

Usually, I only react with actual emotion (as opposed to curiosity, interest, etc.) when someone whose work I love has passed away, especially when that loss happens far too young. Two examples from the last decade—for millions, not just me: Elliott Smith, who made some of the finest Beatles-esque pop music since, well, the Beatles; and Heath Ledger, whose performance in Brokeback Mountain I still regard as one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. Both men were widely praised and beloved, and I would have loved to see what both would have done in the years and decades following their untimely deaths. Most of all, I wish their families and friends didn’t have to suffer such all-encompassing, unexpected pain.

But every once in a while, there’s a pop culture death whose meaning hits me significantly but unexpectedly. One such event was this week’s passing of Frances Reid, who starred in Days of Our Lives for more than 40 years as Alice Horton, the matriarch of the show’s central family. She was 95.

Pausing to reflect on what I was feeling after seeing the news of Frances Reid’s death, I realized it was, at first, quite pure nostalgia. I love the word nostalgia, which literally means “the pain (algos in Greek) of going home (nostos).” Nostalgia shares the algos root with such words as “analgesic,” “fibromyalgia,” and others commonly associated with physical pain. The concept of nostalgia has been cheapened in our culture, too often equated with dismissive, ironic “retro” poses, golden oldies collections, and falsely romanticized collective memories of a time that never was. When nostalgia becomes but a marketing trope, it ceases to be true. True nostalgia is, both by nature and by etymological derivation, a sweet, exquisite, personal, deeply felt pain born from memories of a real place and time to which one can never return. It is recalling the full range of joy, pain, love, anger, confusion, and occasional exaltation of one’s past, and realizing those specific instances now exist only as shadows—ones that grow more hazy and ill defined with each passing year. Nostalgia is reverie, but only in retrospect.

Thinking of Frances Reid reminded me of what was, in many ways, the last simple time in my life—the mid-1980s, when I was about 9 years old. Among their other pursuits and interests (including Top 40 radio and cruising our hometown in a brown 1983 Cutlass Supreme), my teenage brother and his girlfriend (my future sister-in-law) had gone nuts over the Bo and Hope romance storyline on Days of Our Lives. At the time, Days came on at 3:00 in the Nashville media market, so it was the soap opera of choice for high-schoolers because they could actually watch it almost in its entirety after school (for the young’uns, no DVRs back then). And, for one 4th-grader who wanted to be like his brother, Days became something to try to follow too.

I remember the main characters from those days. Bo and Hope, of course, but also Shane, Patch, Roman, Marlena, Tony, and the embodiment of the evil that all-too-often plagued Salem, Stefano Dimera. And, I remember Tom and Alice, the grandfatherly and grandmotherly Hortons who unconditionally dispensed love and wisdom to their brood during their seemingly neverending and tumultuous travails. I had only one step-grandparent still living at that time, and I only saw her once or twice a year, so the eldest Hortons at times felt like stand-in grandparents.

Those are sweet memories, as are my memories of the only other time I watched Days of Our Lives on a regular basis. I was in college, and Marlena Brady was possessed by a demon. For at least a year (a year!!!), as I recall, Marlena spoke in a digitally altered Satan voice and had yellow, flashing eyes filled with supernatural malice. I also remember that many students at my college, certainly more than would admit it now, were building their class schedules around Days of Our Lives (which I think aired at 1:00 in Lexington at the time) and having viewing parties. I’ve since heard similar reports from students at other schools in the mid-90s. Though much less of a presence in storylines, Alice Horton, by then having lost her husband Tom, still showed up during the show’s holiday specials and other tenderly sentimental moments. Her presence was diminished, but she was still an anchor in the awesomely contrived, unintentionally hilarious storm that was that era’s Days of Our (demonic) Lives.

I haven’t watched the show since then, so I am unqualified to write an analysis of Frances Reid’s final years or her overarching role in the history of Days and the soap opera world in general. I will say, though, that if Reid’s death sparked these kinds of feelings in this rare and intermittent viewer of the show, I can only imagine the depth of emotion with which many of the true, Alice Horton-era Days fans reacted this week.

I’m also certain that most of those fans weren’t teenagers and college kids. Many were (are) homemakers who had Days on while doing their constant, too-often-undervalued work to anchor their families…much like Alice Horton herself.

It would be nice if the work and sacrifices of those women were, on a societal level, as honored and valued as a daytime TV actress who fictionally represented them. Equally important, would that the work, autonomy, and hard-won freedom of choice of all women—no matter their career paths, no matter their race or socioeconomic status, no matter their embrace or rejection of gender-based norms and expectations—be as sacrosanct as the “traditional family values” embodied in the Horton clan, helmed by Frances Reid’s Alice.

That’s where my thoughts ended up when I thought of Frances Reid’s death and her work as an actress. During her time, Days of Our Lives began with the familiar refrain, “Like sands through the hourglass…so are the days of our lives.” It’s trite, but its true—for us all, the irreversible force of time pulls away the days of our lives. Of the metaphorical sand in the hourglass, the few last grains must one day fall. Until then, the comfort and the bittersweetness of our memories provide the psychic and emotional framework for what’s to come. For the lucky among us, there is plenty of love and warmth to fill our present and future days. In no small way, Alice Horton, the character Frances Reid played so well for so long, embodied those lasting truths. May she rest in peace.

But Salem ain’t the real world. There’s no single, Stefano-like human embodiment of evil (certain politicians and pundits excluded), but there is abounding, systemic injustice based on gender, race, nationality, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. It’s easy to focus almost exclusively on our immediate circle of friends and family, home and work. The drama within those spheres can be downright soap-operatic at times, it’s true. Just getting through life, even a good, secure, comfortable life, can be trying.

The danger in those habits of life and mind, though, is that the struggles of others may start to appear lesser. They’re not.

It’s perhaps odd that the death of a nonagenarian TV actress led me to these thoughts, but no matter—I needed the reminder. The few last grains must one day fall. Until then, there are the joys of hearth and home, family and friends.

There is also, not merely for my own benefit, work still to be done.