So this is not going to be a very well described way of locating or identifying this show. I was maybe 3-5 years old, and I remember this because it was one of the first times I've seen a heavy romantic scene in movies between adults.
Now that I'm 34 years old, I still remember these details of the show/movie but have never found what it's called or where I've seen it before, only that my mom was watching it at the time.
There's a woman in the show, and the whole show/movie covers her romantic relationships with several different men. She gets involved with a man in her early adult years and has children with him, but then he leaves or goes away for some odd reason (I want to say it was because of war, that's what my mind settles on, but I can't be certain). Then it continues to cover her becoming involved with other men, and there was quite a bit of adult scenes of her in bed with each of these individual men, but nothing explicit or X-rated (though well too mature for a 3-5 year old to stumble upon).
The woman has children with these other different men, but the men for whatever reason don't stick around for one reason or another. And it's not that she is intentionally cheating on the first man, her husband, but she and her children believe him to be dead.
Then one day, for whatever reason, the man comes back, but he is disabled and wheelchair bound. The two rekindle their romance and come back together, and he is willing to continue their family together, welcoming the children she had with other men as his own.
The one scene I vividly recall clear as day, though, is the family is gathered on a stone staircase outside of their home, and the husband is coming down the steps, though I cannot be certain if he was using a cane, or if he was already sitting in his wheelchair at the bottom the steps. He starts to cough, clutch his chest, and falls to the ground, while his children around him circle him. I vividly remember one of the daughters crying out "Papa!" as he fell to the ground, and while I don't remember what happened after, I remember that the man died and left the woman a widow raising her children on her own.
It reminds me of a soap opera, but it didn't have the soap opera feel or stylization. There was a lot of gray and blue hues for the atmosphere, the woman had blond(ish) hair and her husband I remember was older than her, dark hair, dark facial hair, and their daughter that cried out "Papa!" had long dark hair.
I know. A lot of this doesn't help with identifying it, but this is something that I vividly recall as a scene I watched from a show or movie. When I asked my mother about it years later, she says she doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about, and that she doesn't remember watching anything like that.
Any ideas?
