Lifestyle
When my mom died suddenly, there was only one place to mourn: Disneyland
My mother, Donna, died unexpectedly earlier this month. On a recent Tuesday morning, she got up as normal, and even went to the salon. That evening, she was in the hospital. Thirty-six hours later, she was gone. These have been among the most difficult weeks of my life.
I spent the first half of March at home near Chicago to grieve with my family and will likely be visiting often throughout the year to continue the process. I’ve never liked the past tense — grieved — as that implies a conclusion to something that changes us, alters our course and continues to define us. There is no neat bow for a box that can be comfortably closed and compartmentalized — here lies memories of a loved one.
And yet we survive, hopefully with something learned.
Upon returning to my adopted residence of Los Angeles, I did what I always do when down: I spent time with my cat, listened to records and then visited Disneyland, the so-called happiest place on earth. Pirates of the Caribbean was always my family’s first stop, and when I went on the ride, I tried to recall family trips — of my parents rushing to the attraction and of my brother attempting to take flash-free pictures, letting the calmly swaying boat take me back to an earlier, more uplifting time. But I mostly spent the day attempting to absorb the atmosphere. My mind needed happiness and joy, and environments that aim to comfort.
Like many in America, I grew up with parents who devoted the bulk of their vacation time to Disney’s theme parks. I’ve kept up the tradition — I write about theme parks for a living, but I also go to Disneyland often in my free time. So much so that one time later in life my mother even questioned it, perplexed by my desire to re-pilgrimage the park in times good or bad. Job promotion? Off to Disneyland. A breakup? Disneyland again. The recent devastating fires that struck our region? Disneyland was there for me.
The author at a young age with his mother, Donna, at Walt Disney World’s Epcot in the 1980s.
(The Martens Family)
“I wonder what we did to you that makes you go there so often,” my ma said a few years back on the phone while I sat in the lobby of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. I didn’t really answer — I laughed, probably sighed — but in hindsight, I wish I had been a bit more talkative. I would have reminded my mom of what she did, because in Disneyland I saw many of the lessons she attempted to impart.
So today, Ma, I’ll tell you what you did that makes me go to Disneyland so often. You instilled in me a belief in goodness. You inspired in me optimism, that I could and should do whatever I want and I am capable of achieving my goals. And somehow — despite all the worrying, and yes, my mom worried a lot — there was an idea that things would work out in the end, no pixie dust needed. She told me in early March that she hoped she lived long enough to read my first book, believing that goal of mine was an inevitability. That book will be dedicated to her.
My mom inspired in me optimism. Despite all the worrying, there was an idea that things would work out in the end, no pixie dust needed.
— Todd Martens
My mom never tired of my crazy dreams. When I said I wanted to be on “Saturday Night Live,” she drove me to weekly improv classes at Second City. And when I said I maybe wasn’t funny enough to be on “Saturday Night Live,” we switched to acting classes. And when I was tired of making errors in Little League, my mom encouraged me to maybe think about something else. I was scared to. My mom recognized my early tendency to avoid confrontation, and I was afraid my dad would be upset. But my mom sat me down and carefully explained what to say and how to be honest and express what I wanted. My dad, of course, wasn’t upset.
It was in moments such as these that this fairy-tale-loving kid saw my mom’s hopes and imagination. I’ve long believed we don’t go to theme parks to escape the world so much as to help make sense of it, for in Disneyland we see our cultural narratives and stories reflected back to us. An attraction such as Snow White’s Enchanted Wish isn’t simply about a happily ever after; throughout, we see hard work, perseverance and unexpected tragedies. What’s more, its recently refreshed ending centers Snow White’s reliance on community rather than her magical husband, and argues that true love comes only after we’ve put in the time and effort.
Alice in Wonderland takes the unpredictability of life and gives it a Technicolor whirl, assuring us our nightmares are really just dreams. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride throws us deep into our vices in a statement of our own agency. It’s a Small World, via its whimsy and childlike wonder, makes clear we’re not really all that different, rendering the divisions and hate in the world temporarily meaningless. Pirates of the Caribbean shows the ways in which greed and gluttony turn us into caricatures, while the Haunted Mansion finds frivolity in the afterlife, reminding us to enjoy our time while we’re here.
The author, Todd Martens, left, and his mother, Donna, at a recent wedding in Chicago. Donna died unexpectedly this month.
(The Martens Family)
For at Disneyland, exaggerations are the norm, and if we let ourselves live in these abstracted worlds, we can sense their heightened emotions. And what I admired most about my mom, who worked most of her life as a preschool teacher, was both her ability to feel everything deeply and find new ways to spin what was happening around her. When my friends and I broke a small vase by hitting Wiffle balls inside the house on a rainy day, she didn’t scold. She suggested we switch to hitting a dust rag around the room, instead. Thus, Dust Ball was born.
One thing I’ll never forget is the way in which any global conflict when I was younger would pain her. She had a deep-rooted fear that war would lead to a draft and my older brother would be called into service. As a young child, I wasn’t aware that she had earlier lived through such moments with my father, nor did I fully understand what a draft was. I just saw my mom needed a hug.
As I got older, I saw this moment for what it was. I saw it as a sign of someone who cares, deeply. Someone who feels, immensely. Someone who fantasizes, brilliantly. I saw imagination. I saw concern. And I saw love. I also saw a way to look at life — to dream, to fear, to wonder, to hope, and when someone asks what’s wrong, to tell them and to accept that hug.
And so it was that I found myself at Disneyland just 48 hours after returning to L.A. I partly wanted to see some familiar faces. I also wanted to bask in the eternal power of fairy tales. All of the park has lessons to impart, even Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, where tales of good and evil are stand-ins for the haves and the have-nots — the pure rugged and close to nature while the oppressors are obsessed with image and mechanical and technological artifice.
I also just wanted to remind myself of those parental life lessons. Among the items I brought back to L.A. was one of my mom’s adult coloring books, a gift from my father that I placed on my coffee table and will forever cherish. I’ve thumbed through it daily since returning, smiling at her love of art and dedication to the coloring craft, but also to remember that every day I’ll have my mom’s guidance.
And that means to embrace, to worry, to wonder and to daydream. Because that is how we never stop living. And my mom will not stop living with me.
Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.
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After years of avoiding the ER, Noah Wyle feels ‘right at home’ in ‘The Pitt’
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From left: Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending physician, and Fiona Dourif plays Dr. Cassie McKay, a third-year resident, in a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department in the HBO Max series The Pitt.
Warrick Page/HBO Max
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The first five minutes of the new season of The Pitt instantly capture the state of medicine in the mid-2020s: a hectic emergency department waiting room; a sign warning that aggressive behavior will not be tolerated; a memorial plaque for victims of a mass shooting; and a patient with large Ziploc bags filled to the brink with various supplements and homeopathic remedies.
Scenes from the new installment feel almost too recognizable to many doctors.
The return of the critically acclaimed medical drama streaming on HBO Max offers viewers a surprisingly realistic view of how doctors practice medicine in an age of political division, institutional mistrust and the corporatization of health care.
Each season covers one day in the kinetic, understaffed emergency department of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, with each episode spanning a single hour of a 15-hour shift. That means there’s no time for romantic plots or far-fetched storylines that typically dominate medical dramas.
Instead, the fast-paced show takes viewers into the real world of the ER, complete with a firehose of medical jargon and the day-to-day struggles of those on the frontlines of the American health care system. It’s a microcosm of medicine — and of a fragmented United States.
Many doctors and health professionals praised season one of the series, and ER docs even invited the show’s star Noah Wyle to their annual conference in September.
So what do doctors think of the new season? As a medical student myself, I appreciated the dig at the “July effect” — the long-held belief that the quality of care decreases in July when newbie doctors start residency — rebranded “first week in July syndrome” by one of the characters.
That insider wink sets the tone for a season that Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, says is on point. Patel, who co-hosts the show’s companion podcast, watched the first nine episodes of the new installment and spoke to NPR about his first impressions.
To me, as a medical student, the first few scenes of the new season are pretty striking, and they resemble what modern-day emergency medicine looks and sounds like. From your point of view, how accurate is it?
I’ll say off the bat, when it comes to capturing the full essence of practicing health care — the highs, the lows and the frustrations — The Pitt is by far the most medically accurate show that I think has ever been created. And I’m not the only one to share that opinion. I hear that a lot from my colleagues.
OK, but is every shift really that chaotic?
I mean, obviously, it’s television. And I know a lot of ER doctors who watch the show and are like, “Hey, it’s really good, but not every shift is that crazy.” I’m like, “Come on, relax. It’s TV. You’ve got to take a little bit of liberties.”
As in its last season, The Pitt sheds light on the real — sometimes boring — bureaucratic burdens doctors deal with that often get in the way of good medicine. How does that resonate with real doctors?
There are so many topics that affect patient care that are not glorified. And so The Pitt did this really artful job of inserting these topics with the right characters and the right relatable scenarios. I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a pretty relatable issue in season two with medical bills.
Right. Insurance seems to take center stage at times this season — almost as a character itself — which seems apt for this moment when many Americans are facing a sharp rise in costs. But these mundane — yet heartbreaking — moments don’t usually make their way into medical dramas, right?
I guarantee when people see this, they’re going to nod their head because they know someone who has been affected by a huge hospital bill.
If you’re going to tell a story about an emergency department that is being led by these compassionate health care workers doing everything they can for patients, you’ve got to make sure you insert all of health care into it.
As the characters juggle multiple patients each hour, a familiar motif returns: medical providers grappling with some heavy burdens outside of work.
Yeah, the reality is that if you’re working a busy shift and you have things happening in your personal life, the line between personal life and professional life gets blurred and people have moments.
The Pitt highlights that and it shows that doctors are real people. Nurses are actual human beings. And sometimes things happen, and it spills out into the workplace. It’s time we take a step back and not only recognize it, but also appreciate what people are dealing with.
2025 was another tough year for doctors. Many had to continue to battle misinformation while simultaneously practicing medicine. How does medical misinformation fit into season two?
I wouldn’t say it’s just mistrust of medicine. I mean that theme definitely shows up in The Pitt, but people are also just confused. They don’t know where to get their information from. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t know what the right decision is.
There’s one specific scene in season two that, again, no spoilers here, but involves somebody getting their information from social media. And that again is a very real theme.
In recent years, physical and verbal abuse of healthcare workers has risen, fueling mental health struggles among providers. The Pitt was praised for diving into this reality. Does it return this season?
The new season of The Pitt still has some of that tension between patients and health care professionals — and sometimes it’s completely projected or misdirected. People are frustrated, they get pissed off when they can’t see a doctor in time and they may act out.
The characters who get physically attacked in The Pitt just brush it off. That whole concept of having to suppress this aggression and then the frustration that there’s not enough protection for health care workers, that’s a very real issue.
A new attending physician, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, joins the cast this season. Sepideh Moafi plays her, and she works closely with the veteran attending physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle. What are your — and Robby’s — first impressions of her?
Right off the bat in the first episode, people get to meet this brilliant firecracker. Dr. Al-Hashimi, versus Dr. Robby, almost represents two generations of attending physicians. They’re almost on two sides of this coin, and there’s a little bit of clashing.
Sepideh Moafi, fourth from left, as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, the new attending physician, huddles with her team around a patient in a fictional Pittsburgh teaching hospital in the HBO Max series The Pitt.
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Part of that clash is her clear-eyed take on artificial intelligence and its role in medicine. And she thinks AI can help doctors document what’s happening with patients — also called charting — right?
Yep, Dr. Al-Hashimi is an advocate for AI tools in the ER because, I swear to God, they make health care workers’ lives more efficient. They make things such as charting faster, which is a theme that shows up in season two.
But then Dr. Robby gives a very interesting rebuttal to the widespread use of AI. The worry is that if we put AI tools everywhere, then all of a sudden, the financial arm of health care would say, “Cool, now you can double how many patients you see. We will not give you any more resources, but with these AI tools, you can generate more money for the system.”
The new installment also continues to touch on the growing corporatization of medicine. In season one we saw how Dr. Robby and his staff were being pushed to see more patients.
Yes, it really helps the audience understand the kind of stressors that people are dealing with while they’re just trying to take care of patients.
In the first season, when Dr. Robby kind of had that back and forth with the hospital administrator, doctors were immediately won over because that is such a big point of frustration — such a massive barrier.
There are so many more themes explored this season. What else should viewers look forward to?
I’m really excited for viewers to dive into the character development. It’s so reflective of how it really goes in residency. So much happens between your first year and second year of residency — not only in terms of your medical skill, but also in terms of your development as a person.
I think what’s also really fascinating is that The Pitt has life lessons buried in every episode. Sometimes you catch it immediately, sometimes it’s at the end, sometimes you catch it when you watch it again.
But it represents so much of humanity because humanity doesn’t get put on hold when you get sick — you just go to the hospital with your full self. And so every episode — every patient scenario — there is a lesson to learn.
Michal Ruprecht is a Stanford Global Health Media Fellow and a fourth-year medical student.
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