The text was tongue-in-cheek, but I agree with the gist of it.
I don’t really get it, either. And then I remember Winehouse and I guess I do get it somewhat.
I’m just wary of the superficiality of internet or recreational mourning.
Bowie and Ali should have knocked me sideways - as working class heroes who informed my whole life - but they didn’t. Maybe with Winehouse I am more reflective of the waste, the unfulfilled uniqueness.
I remember the country being almost paralysed between Diana’s death and the funeral; old people getting on unfamiliar busses with bunches of flowers to go, well, everyone knew where and helped the old people get there. A whole bunch of doctoral theses were written after that. I always thought part of that was the two boys and motherhood cut short …
I seriously can’t grieve for people like Carrie Fisher - jesus, who wouldn’t want a life like that.
Quite a lot of people wouldn’t. She lost years and years to addiction, which is probably why she died twenty years younger than average while still busy in movies.
She doesn’t invite sympathy and I’m not offering it.
I can’t parse what you mean there. Do you mean because she had a nice life, albeit one marred by drugs? So did Amy Winehouse.
For me it depends a lot of who they were, how they’d affected me personally (which someone can do without ever having met you) but mostly on the circumstances of their death.
But that’s also true of relatives. JPII, my grandmothers? Eh, expiration date reached. They’d affected me in different ways, but for the good grandmother I’m glad that once she went down she went down quickly (she had long prayed for a quick death; we joke that the specific way and timing are proof that she had a direct line); for the bad one, it was about bloody time. And JPII, velis nolis, wasn’t what you’d call a spring chicken either.
People who appeared to have been in the middle of something, who were preparing this, preparing that; or who may have commited suicide; or even whose circumstances are such that suicide is considered likely. Those hit me harder, because I get a feeling that their lifes have gotten interrupted rather than ending at the last page. And this is true whether I know them personally, whether they’re celebrities, or whether they’re the cousin of my sister-in-law’s hairdresser. It’s just a different kind of death.
The fame and influence of the celebrity doesn’t matter as much as how you personally like them either. I wasn’t really that affected by David Bowie or even Michael Jackson come up but did a definite quote in quote when Bernard “Dr. Bombay” Fox died recently even though it was natural causes and a ripe old age. He was the last significant cast member of Bewitched other than the kids, and I loved that show when I was a kid myself.
I’m not happy about anyone’s death, but I care a lot more about all the police officers and soldiers deaths that happened this year.
Okay in the spirit of the thread why?
Given location it’s doubtful that you met them or that they had a significant impact on your life.
On thing bodycams have taught us is that while there are police officers and soldiers who do this for the “right reasons” there are bad ones too and that sometimes even the good ones will cover for them.
Why does this class of death mean more to you?
I’m Catholic also, I can’t say I actually cried when the Pope died but felt it was of some importance.
However given that a few (ha ha) people on a forum like this are not religious or even mildly skeptical (ha ha ha) of my religion, I do recognize that this kind of feeling is somewhat relative and personal. Somewhat the same as when it comes to being sad about celebrity deaths (me, never), or being really seriously bummed up when your sports team loses* or even the degree of emotional involvement in politics to the point where people literally sob over election results**. I have my own opinions what’s important in life, other people have different ones.
*I got over that during the Patrick Ewing era of the NY Knicks in US pro basketball. I actually felt personally badly, a bit seriously, that this bunch of people who didn’t know I existed couldn’t win a championship. I’ve never again seriously cared about a sports team though I still watch sports and root for teams.
**understandable in countries where it might actually mean the govt is coming to get you, but a bit much just IMHO in the US, yes even with the ‘evils’ of the GOP (as many here would see it) and the Democrats (as you’d hear often on right leaning fora).
Or, as some anonymous mourner wrote on a note taped to Belushi’s gravestone:
He could have given us a lot more laughs, but noooooo.
Not just addiction but mental illness (she was bi-polar). I suspect that had a lot to do with her history of substance abuse.
Also, I can’t help but wonder if the diet she went on to lose weight for The Force Awakens may have played a role in weakening her heart. I wish I could provide a link but I recall reading that losing a lot of weight in a short period of time can do serious damage to your heart if you’re middle aged or older. I remember thinking that when Fisher mentioned the diet she had been on and saw the photos of her on the set of the film.
Agreed about CF being bipolar - just didn’t want to harp on about the things that made her life hard. I mean, she was rich and had opportunities that people without her heritage didn’t have, but if you include the addiction problems and mental health problems, I don’t think she actually had that great a life, really, despite what up_the_junction said. I think they were probably unaware of the issues that CF had. She admitted to barely remembering large portions of her life. Now, I have impoverished/reasonably OK friends who can say the same, but still, losing a decade or two is a big deal. You don’t get that back.
You might well have a valid point about her losing weight quickly contributing to her early death but it’s likely that, if that did happen, she knew that was a risk, and did it anyway, because it was better for her legacy than not losing weight. I doubt we’ll ever know.
This may be taking this thread off-topic but, as bad as suffering from being bipolar is, at least Fisher and other people who have the condition have benefitted from a greater understanding of mental illness and its causes over the last 30 years. Before then, there seemed to be a lot less knowledge of the biological and inherited factors that cause mental illnesses like bipolar disorders (then called manic depression) and greater emphasis on outside factors like traumatic childhood events and bad parenting. As a result, treatment was less effective. In fact, Fisher could’ve very easily ended up like one of her Hollywood contemporaries, Mary Selznick, who was also bipolar and had substance abuse problems before jumping off a 20 story building in 1976 while supposedly in the throes of a “manic” episode.
As others have probably said, I get sad or teary at some celebrities because they and their roles really meant something special to me, or marked an important part of my childhood.
Anyone else here in their early 60’s from Kansas City/The NE Kansas area?
I was working in Michigan when my mother sent me a newspaper article about the death of a local celebrity named Frank Wiziarde. I actually cried a little.
He was known to me and a generation of children as “Whizzo the Clown” He had a TV show in KC, and later in Topeka for a while. Loved that clown, the gentle humor and the silly characters. I was even on the show once! Missed that man.
One thing I am absolutely certain about with this particular subject/mystery, is that if you haven’t experienced what you need to, in order to understand how others feel, there is no way to explain it to you intellectually, in a way that will change your sense of things.
In short, if you don’t understand it, it’s because you have yet to have been through whatever is necessary, for you to do so.
Until you fall truly in love, and are horribly betrayed, you can’t possibly understand how soul shattering that is.
Everything in life that you have not been through, is just a fantasy to you, until you do experience it. You only THINK you can appreciate some things, because you’ve been through something a little similar. But the actual experience will be different.
Even people who cry at someone else’s death, after they have been through other certain experiences, will come to cry DIFFERENTLY about the loss of others.