Sympathy: Redux

Insert snarky comment here.

            It started when David Bowie died.  Then Alan Rickman, Garry Shandling, and most recently, Prince. Wait, no, it began long before that.  Robin Williams. Maybe MCA. Jesus, maybe when George Carlin died in 2008? Kurt Vonnegut? Chris Farley, Phil Hartmann? Okay, well, at least we have a pattern.

            I never met any one of these people. Neither did you.  And if you did, it was a fleeting glance in public or maybe as an audience member.  I felt something when they died.  Not as much as when my grandmother died, but more then when I heard Nancy Reagan died. No offense to the former first lady, but truthfully I didn’t give a shit about her. 

            Is that cruel?  No.  Not really.  But it is my point.

            Something about these people touched us, even though we weren’t family or friends.  It was an artistic connection between artist and observer. It was through the mysterious impact of laughter. Or, as in the case with Prince, we have memories of our own lives tied with their work.  I own Purple Rain. That’s it. I always meant to buy 1999, but I never got around to it. I always thought of him as someone cool and there were dozens of singles I thought were awesome, but he didn’t crack my top 20 favorite musicians.  However, Prince was the 1980’s.  He and Madonna split the 1980’s by being everywhere all the time with new songs, new looks, and shitty movies.  You can’t explain the time in which I grew up without a Prince song in there, somewhere.

            So when he died I felt gut-punched.  I respected Bowie just as much, but I didn’t grow up with him. The image of Prince is permanently stamped in my brain; with all his weirdo clothes and his band of freaks backing him up.  I felt a loss of where I came from. Like having your old school torn down. (Which also happened, by the by.)

            The point?  This mass display of loss and grief, no matter how great or small, is a good thing.  Tears, swearing, dedications, memorials…it is all a good thing.  All of it.  It is something we need at our very core.  The benefits are innumerable.  My particular favorite is that these outpourings of emotion bring us together.  Even for a few days. 

            What grinds my soul like a pestle to mortar are the people who balk at these feelings.  They accuse others of piggybacking on a tragedy to get attention.  These cold, callus people question the so-called love or fandom of those of us feeling a sense of loss.  My retort to these heartless assholes would be one word: So?

            Who gives a shit whether someone is vicariously feeling something through a distant tragedy?  Why do you care?  Maybe these people need a release?  Maybe the tragedy brings something up inside them that you don’t see because you are hollowed-out husk of a human being.  The rest of us are overwhelmed, scared and sensitive people who desperately search for those few, beautiful, true moments in our lives that aren’t about bills and bullshit.

            Sometimes, I am so thankful that I wear my emotions on my sleeve.  I cry at movies.  Certain songs still give me goosebumps.  I get excited for things. Loud. Passionate. Goofy.  I makes me feel alive and awake.  It’s worth it to have to mourn the passing of some of the people that inspired or entertained me.  They left a mark on me and I don’t want to forget it.