Last spring, my mom broke the news to me. 

“They’ve canceled ‘Guiding Light,’ “ she said, in that same tone she uses to break the news that someone we know has cancer. 

“Oh,” I said, really at a loss for words. I hadn’t watched the show for years.  

And therein lies the problem. The oldest soap opera in the history of soap operas has been steadily losing viewers since the late 1980s, about the time more and more women hit the workplace and winners like the Jerry Springer Show started drawing the viewers who were left. 

Briefly, I thought about resurrecting my GL obsession, which I only gave up in the late 1990s. It’s all my fault, I thought. If I’d watched, maybe I could have made a difference. 

But I figured that would be like visiting a store you really liked (but usually forgot to shop) that’s going out of business, just to take advantage of the sales. Too little, too late. And kind of tacky. 

And now, as of Friday, there will be no more “Guiding Light.” No more Bauer barbecues, no more Lewis drinking benders, no more freaky storylines with princes from contrived foreign countries where everyone speaks English with exotic accents. 

I grew up with GL and the show that precedes it in CBS’ afternoon lineup, “As the World Turns.” My mom has been watching ATWT since it began, and that’s just about the time she started watching GL, too. 

So from the time I was a babe in diapers, I suffered through the trials and triumphs of GL’s Bauer family of Springfield, the story’s setting, wondering why they couldn’t stay married longer than a year or so and why the brides always wore white, even if they’d been to the altar dozens of times. 

I remember fondly the intertwined love affairs of the 1980s teen-age foursome -- Phillip and Beth and Mindy and Rick. Heady days, those were. Wondering if Phillip and Beth would finally be together or whether Mindy would sabotage the whole thing. Thinking Rick was cute but dorky. Falling along with Beth for Lujack, who turned out to be the illegitimate son of Phillip’s aunt, Alexandra. 

When our family got its first VCR, one of the selling points for my mom was that she could videotape her “stories.” Then she could watch them while she made dinner after work. And she did, too, and woe to whomever interrupted her while her stories were on, even if she could pause and rewind. 

I stayed with GL through college, even as most of my friends were watching “Days of Our Lives” or “All My Children.” Frankly, I always though GL had the hottest guys. Two words: Hart Jessup. Oh. My. God. GL still does have the hotties, even if I do feel like a cougar for ogling Jonathan, one of Reva’s illegitimate children. 

Yet the day came when I had to break away.

I hadn’t been married too long. I worked close enough to our apartment that I could return home to eat lunch and watch a little GL in the process.

And I found myself forming an unhealthy attachment to the characters, to the extent that I channeled their angst. When Vanessa was about to marry Fletcher, for example, but still had feelings for Billy, I obsessed over whether my newlywed hubby still pined for an old girlfriend. It was ridiculous. So I turned it off. 

I had another brief fling with GL and the other CBS soaps during my first maternity leave in 1996.

I found myself planning my days around the TV: exercising during Regis and Kathie Lee, while the baby took a morning nap. Bathing and playing with the baby during The Price is Right and “The Young and the Restless.” Getting a shower in myself during the 30-minute newsbreak from noon to 12:30 p.m., while the baby took a turn in the swing. And back on the couch with the baby and a sandwich in time for “The Bold and the Beautiful” at 12:30 p.m. I was set until after Oprah, and by that time, my hubby was home.

Crazy. And embarrassing. I had nothing to show for 12 weeks of leave (well, except the baby, of course.) So I quit GL and its sister soaps, and I haven’t been back. 

Oh, sure. There have been a few times I’ve run into the Spauldings and Lewises and Bauers over the years, mostly at my mom’s. It was kind of like seeing my old high school boyfriend. I was happy to see GL still looking so good but glad I had moved on. 

Other viewers moved on, too, though, despite GL’s cutting-edge camera work and pretty darn good acting. After all, it’s the show that launched Kevin Bacon, Allison Janney, JoBeth Williams and other notables.

But maybe its time has come – I mean, really, who thought it was a good idea for leukemia patient Reva to have a perimenopausal pregnancy? It feels a little like “The Perils of Pauline.” 

Still, I am sad that GL is going away forever. It’s the end of a TV era, one that shaped my childhood. It was fun watching the soaps with my mom, who watched them with her mom, linking our three generations like the Bauers were linked to the Lewises and Spauldings.  

Maybe that’s why I feel guilty, because it feels like I turned my back on my heritage. After all, watching the fictional foibles of Springfield’s families always made my mom and grandmother feel a little better about their own lives.

Whatever happened, at least they knew they hadn’t accidentally married their mother’s stepbrother’s daughter’s illegitimate son by her adopted grandfather.

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