That may be. I have heard something similar from others and have no experience that would contradict this.
But I did know Chris briefly, because he was a glider pilot. I flew an interesting flight with him in New England, and he was involved in scattering the ashes of a mutual pilot friend who was killed in a crash. Based on this, I had some real respect for him.
I know someone’s commented on this…er…comment, so I don’t want Indygrrl to think I’m belaboring the point in order to rag on her. I’m just offering a POV.
That being said… I know that it must be…incredibly difficult to understand how people who’re paralyzed (paraplegics, like myself, or quadriplegics, like Reeve) can lead happy, productive lives with romantic partners, not caregivers to whom they happen to be married. It probably does look horrible indeed to an able-bodied person who only sees it in snippets. One can’t know what someone else’s life is like just by viewing snippets.
The thing is, life is, in part, what we make of it. And while I can’t walk, I lead a happy and fruitful life and have never been a burden on anyone. Perhaps Dana Reeve wasn’t looking for a chance to move on; perhaps their life together was happier than we can imagine.
You make an important point, but some people with spinal cord injuries do decide they are better off dead. The physical pain and the inability to engage in certain activities they once enjoyed actually can make life unbearable for some people. I had a friend who took his own his life after eight years as a paraplegic, and from what I know of his condition, he made a legitimate, rational choice. Not that we wouldn’t rather have him around, but we have no right to demand that he suffer so we can enjoy his company.
I’m with Eve on this one.
Celebrities are part of our lives, or contribute to our lives. I was sad when I heard of Reeve’s death, because he seemed to be so hopeful and I liked some of his movies. I loved the Superman movies and I even drew a few portraits of him (given away to friends, and other fans) over the years.
I was quite sad when film composer Jerry Goldsmith died (I still can’t believe it), because I have loved his music since I was 11 and for all these years I’ve been able to look forward to his “next” soundtrack. Now there won’t be any “next” soundtrack. He’s done. And yeah, that makes me sad. Damned sad. And he seemed like a great guy and an inspiration (in his creativity) so why shouldn’t I feel sad?
Do I sob buckets of tears? No. Not even for Goldsmith. But it’s been months since Goldsmith died, and I’m still sad. (An aside to any Goldsmith fans: Varese Sarabande has released the “rejected” Goldsmith score for “Timeline” and it’s pretty good.)
Trunk, I get what you’re saying about not being affected by celebrity deaths. It’s a kind of nepotism I suffer from too. The closer the person is to me, the worse my grief. And quite consistently with this, I cry in movies and reading books when *fictional * characters die. Poor old Romeo and Juliet still bug me - if only Romeo had got that message in time…It’s still nepotism though, because those characters, if only for a couple of hours, were there in front of me, getting under my skin. Whereas some real but anonymous person’s death won’t usually phase me unless it was some kind of really horrible way to die.
Yeah, I thought Reeve’s death was a pity. Mainly because I’d read his autobiography, “Still Me”, and therefore felt privvy to his innermost thoughts about his accident, his disablity, and his dream of walking one day. I was sorry his dream would never come true, because the poor sod put a hell of a lot of effort into warding off atrophy for that day when his spinal cord would be healed. And he’ll never see his son grow up, another dream that had kept him going.
Also, don’t underestimate the effect it can have on some people to have a celeb they grew up with die. That’s why (for about 10 minutes anyway) I was upset when Diana had died - she’d been a person who had constantly been in the news since I was 10 - her death was thereforesomething of a blow. The fact that the Superman movies are treasured memories from my childhood is probably another reason I gave a little sigh when Reeve died. That and maybe the fact my husband’s a 40 year old quad as prone to pressure sores as Reeve was.
[hijack]
Ironically and oddly enough, whatever your views about the nature of his accident, Reeve died of a poor man’s disease. Here in the state of Queensland, Australia, only one SCI sufferer every few years dies of septicaemia caused this way and when that happens it’s usually because of inadequate access to health care for socio-economic reasons. So not only am I (a little) sad but I’m also a little baffled as to how this could have happened.
Some of the issues touched on in this thread are discussed in Faking It: The Sentimentalism of Modern Society (1998) edited by Digby Anderson and Peter Mullen and published by the Social Affairs Unit in London.
Chapters cover areas including education, Christianity and medicine, as well as celebrities and the media. Sentimentalising is defined by Roger Scruton as ‘a way of enjoying the luxury of warm emotions without the usual cost of feeling them’.
Criticising the effects on healthcare issues of the pseudo-responses inspired by the media culture, Dr. Bruce Charlton writes as follows in the chapter entitled ‘Life before health: against the sentimentalising of medicine’ (p. 22):
Many academics and other writers have written searing commentaries on the outpouring of grief occasioned by Diana Princess of Wales’s death, as well as on press coverage of the event/grief.
I was saddened a bit by Reeve’s death…but heck, people die every day. Let’s face it, he lived a lot longer than General Patton did (and had a much higher quality of life). I think that we should all reflect on it, and realize how precious life is.
It gives you pause when you think about getting mad at that guy on the freeway 9who has just cut you off).
It laso makes me wary of riding a horse,or snowbaording!
I am an atheist (or an agnostic- depends on your definition). I do not believe in, or at least I see no evidence for, an afterlife. I do not believe that nature or the cosmos, whatever, particularly cares if everything works out in the final reel: Anne Frank died of malnutrition and disease at 14 and her killers and betrayer got away scot free, John Merrick simply lived a miserable existence filled with physical and emotional pain and then got worse and died, Sharon Tate was a beautiful and sweet person whose name will always invoke hideous and evil connotations all because of a bunch of fucked up kids and no good came of it, etc… (I know of cases in my real life that are as bad if not worse than some of these, but since they’re not celebrities you wouldn’t know them instantly if I didn’t describe them in death- these names you know instantly for, as Eve said, celebrities are a part of our circle of acquaintances in the broadest sense.)
As I said, I don’t believe in an afterlife, therefore I hope that as many of the world’s problems as possible will be resolved by us. Christopher Reeve, because he was already known (albeit a B list name before tragedy intervened), enormously amplified the fact that any one of us can wind up a- pardon me- vegetable at any moment, but in living and striving and speaking of a day when he would walk again, he also amplified hope. His hope, his family’s hope, but also my hope that technology and research and well deployed resources and the like can do in demonstrable fact what previously was only possible in myths of miracles- there are precedents (the curing of smallpox, heart transplants, cataracts removal- to people born not very long ago children with polio becoming healthy and athletic would have been no less miraculous than Reeve walking again would have been to our generation). So, Reeve symbolized one of my great terrors (becoming a living statistic) and one of my great hopes (humans overcoming what was previously unconquerable). When he died, even though I did not know him and there was no direct loss in my life, I was sad, because he never walked again- it’s as if the bad guy won. It’s a completely different sadness than if my mother or my friend or even my dog died- if any of those things happened I’d be incapable of typing this this soon after the event because I’d be too curled in a fetal position to touch the keys- but it’s sad nonetheless. I knew Reeve only intellectually, I’m only intellectually sad, but that still counts.
Of course how’s this for being a liberal pussy: I’ve cried after watching a few movies and after reading a few books. From what I know about Truman Capote he was quite unlikable (flighty little pathologically lying self obsessed backstabbing emotionally needy drug addict), but his Christmas Memory, a few pages about a little boy and a retarded old woman that I never knew in a time I never lived in, reduces me to tears everytime, and I’m not what most would call a sentimental person. Hell, a frigging cartoon elephant- i.e. a life form that only exists on celluloid- rubbing trunks while visiting his mother in a CRAZY ELEPHANT wagon, made me blubber the first time I saw it, so I guess I’m really a basket case. (OTOH, when I woke up during a blizzard one morning when I was 15 and realized that my father was dead, I alerted my mother, called an ambulance… then went outside and cut some wood while trying to think of what could be cooked in the fireplace when company started arriving, and to this day I still haven’t shed a tear- odd.)
No, I’m not saddened by his death. I wasn’t saddened by his accident either. I didn’t know the man. I fall into the category of “don’t care if a celebrity dies.” I care if someone I know dies. Strangers, nope.
And riding horses is not a sport or hobby enjoyed only by the idle rich. There are several Dopers who own horses, me included. And I doubt that they are idle and rich. I know I’m not. I’ve made my priorities and my horse is tops. I’ll go without shoes before he does. Eventing (the discipline Reeve was involved in) is one of the highest risk equestrian disciplines. Dressage (my discipline) is probably the safest. Not many spinal cord injuries among dressage riders. Not many life-altering injuries period among dressage riders.
Sampiro you are not a liberal pussy. I have sat through the funerals for three brothers dry eyed thinking I was stone cold inside, but when I see specific parts in movies, a line in a book or some athlete from Fartknockle, Madagascar winning a Gold Medal in Badmiton, I cry my eyes out.
For years, this has bothered me. Why why why?
As I pondered this I realized that in a public setting like hospitals, funerals and other places where strangers are present, I have the ability to detach and look at the situation from an out of body perserpective.
Where as the movies and such that ‘get to me’ hit me in my own domain, in my own home. Unguarded, unprepared for that little paragraph in book so well written and thought provoking, that the porticullis around my emotional walls are partially down and the Trojan Horse of Emotion barges right on in and I turn into a pile of quivering goo.
Movies, books and TV are to entertain us & Educate us ( and stupify us) so when something that is suppose to be brain candy and ‘just to pass the time until bedtime’ and we can pick out what we want to watch and be comforted by the stuipity/humor/news/whatever of it all. Unlike real like crisis, that spring up on us always at the wrong time , where there we are stuck in the middle of Something Bad and cannot change the channel, delegate it away or run and hide. I think it is some primal reflex that allows some people to function well is a shit storm and other people crumble at the first winds of poo in the air. I really do.
I hope that makes sense.
But I agree with you. When Something Bad Happens to Decent People (Celebrity or otherwise) And There Is No Justice or Kharmic Payback (that we see) it is hard.
When it is a celebrity that we identify with, or just like for whatever reasons, it is hard not to take it personally. When Phil Hartman was murdered by his wife, I felt like crap for days. A guy of tremendous talent whom eveyrone said was a professional through and through, murdered in his sleep by his own wife. I still miss him on the Simpsons.
When Tupac Shukar was murdered, I could care less and figured he probably had it coming from all the bad buzz that came from around this guy.
Elvis has been dead for years, but his Whatever lives on. Jimi Hendrix’ grave in Paris is the most popular grave in the cemetary and is strewn with liquor bottles and whatnot. Hell, look at Edgar Allen Poe’s grave. He still gets a visitor once a year. I should be so lucky.
It is all on who you connect with.
Celebrities and entertainers end up becoming like an extension of the family in a twisted way.
Possibly, I overstated that horsey games were for the idle rich, but they’re not exactly for the every man either.
You need to buy, feed, and stable a horse and that automatically implies that you have a degree of disposable income that a lot of people don’t. Not to mention, you either have the time to care for/enjoy the horse, or you have the extra money to pay someone to care for him.
And, I’ve been out in horse country a lot (I live in Baltimore). I was out riding my bike past a Steeplechase event near Oregon Ridge a couple weeks ago (right there at Shawan and Cuba). These folks out riding/watching are undoubtably the ‘upper crust’ of this region. The farms/lands/fences/horses/houses out there are unbelievable.
There aren’t many folks with a bus pass keeping a horse stabled back at the apartment.
Still, this might be reverse cultural snobbery, but I tend to feel a little more sorry for a roofer who get paralyzed falling off a ladder makign $12 an hour than I do for a guy who slipped on the deck of his yacht and broke his neck.
Thanks Cosmo, I appreciate your comments. Last night I got to thinking about what I posted and I realized that it was fairly ignorant of me to make those assumptions.
I like to think that people can be happy, even after a devastating injury. I guess I think that if it happened to me I wouldn’t know how to go on, but everyone probably thinks that until it happens to them.
Thanks for not pitting me or something, I am, after all, just trying to fight ignorance, even my own. 
I can’t say I felt an emotional response at either his accident or his death. He wasn’t anybody to me; he was just a face in some not very good movies. My response, or lack of one, to the death of anybody I didn’t know personally is the same.
I’m really glad that you posted again. Everyone makes assumptions - everyone. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like to be disabled as the result of an accident (I’ve been disabled since birth) but I’m pretty sure I’ve made at least one assumption about what it’s like to be in the shoes of someone who became disabled because of an accident. Best we can all do is stop & reflect, as you did.
Pitting you, by the way, wouldn’t have been appropriate nor done any good. I made the assumption (see?) that you’re an able-bodied person who’d never dealt with paralysis up close & personal; I figured you didn’t know about the other side of things. I try to educate people, not rag on them - that way, maybe they can educate other people whom they meet who have misconceptions.
As for figuring that you wouldn’t be able to go on if you became paralyzed… If I had a nickel for every time someone’s said that to me. 
As another poster whose nick I can’t remember said, some folks cannot handle it & choose to check out. True enough, yes. But you know, a lot of people can & do go on to lead happy, productive lives. It’s sure as hell not easy sometimes, but it can be worth it.