Now that Derek is dead and buried and Meredith has given birth to a daughter named Ellis on Grey’s Anatomy, we can begin the delicate business of mourning and moving on. Viewers saw a little bit of that in last week’s episode, but with so much going on with the baby and Meredith skipping town, I think it got lost in the shuffle. At the end of the episode, Amelia (Derek’s sister) and Meredith were in Meredith’s house, looking on at the brood of children, and when I saw that, that’s when I decided: Meredith and Amelia will be a surgical, baby-raising dream team.
Life has not been easy for either woman. Having struggled with addiction, Amelia came back from the brink only to lose both her fiancé and their son. She fled to Seattle from Los Angeles soon after, taking refuge with Meredith and Derek. Meredith, as longtime viewers of the show know, has also had quite a life. She had a very unhealthy relationship with her mother, was abandoned by her father, and has been involved in a plane crash, near drowning, almost bombing, and pretty much ever other disaster you could imagine. Both Meredith and Amelia need some easy times ahead of them, and I think that each is key to the other’s future survival.
As brilliant a surgeon as she is, Meredith is not perfect. She has been selfish in the past and known to run away from problems. Motherhood has changed her, but now it’s hard for her to reconcile Mommy Meredith and Surgeon Meredith as one person in her brain. Before Derek died, he and Meredith talked about Meredith ramping up her career while he took a back seat to raise their kids, and both parties were all for it. With Derek gone, I want Meredith to sustain that, but how? I think she just needs Amelia to back her up.
Amelia also has some pretty issues of her own, many stemming from abandonment. She’s lost her fiancé and son, as I mentioned above, but also her father and now, her older brother. That’s a lot of loss for a fairly young person. She’s been sober for a while now, and though she almost relapsed in the last episode, she fought through it with Owen’s help. Amelia is also a gifted and talented surgeon, but that’s never been her problem: Her problem is with human connection. By dialing her career back to help Meredith raise Amelia’s nieces and nephew, Amelia could perhaps heal better than she would have if she just throws herself head-on into surgery. Amelia has denied herself feeling any of the grief she’s had for the past few decades, so a human connection — like the ones she has with both her family and with Owen — could really help Amelia.
Now that Derek is gone, I think that Meredith and Amelia will depend on each other not just for babysitting and childrearing purposes, but as two women who recognize exactly what they lost when Derek passed away. There are sure to be bumps in the road for this pair, but once they realize how symbiotic their relationship could be, they'd make for an unstoppable team.
Images: ABC/Danny Feld; Giphy (2)
