grief

Worth


My Twitter stream was awash in updates on the Michael Jackson memorial event on Tuesday and Facebook was only slightly less nauseating. I have not made my distaste for Jackson a secret and while I am sorry for his family, children and whatever real friends he might have had, I am puzzled about the Princess Diana send-off (her funeral frenzy puzzled me at the time too).

Michael Jackson was a has-been. He peaked in the 80’s and destroyed, willfully it appeared, his celebrity and ability to live off his glory years with behaviors that ranged from completely out of touch with reality to criminal at worst/just plain immature and stupid at best. In addition to his “eccentricities”, he was a scam artist who died hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to people and lending institutions he strung along with visions of a comeback since the mid-90’s. So how does an alleged drug addict whose best years were squandered in a materialistic quest to undo his “horrific” childhood rate a send-off fit for a king? Even a king of something of questionable worth like “pop”?

My personal opinion is that his family is being manipulated into participating in a great advertising con which will benefit them some and others a lot more. I also think that if the world weren’t in the grips of the worst economic downturn in the living memories of most, his passing wouldn’t have rated more than a “meh”.

Someone on my Facebook feed commented after the BET tribute to MJ that it seemed to her that the performers were there for themselves and not particularly broken up about the reason behind the performance. I didn’t see the memorial. We have thankfully not only stopped watching television but dropped our cable subscription as well, but I wonder who among the celebrity performers – actors, actresses and the like – was there for personal sentiment and not as photo op or notch for their CV?

The week Will died, the son of a prominent local family died of a drug overdose. I think it may have been a suicide but regardless, he’d had a troubled adulthood. As a teen he was a heralded  tennis champion, but like many he peaked in the junior leagues and flopped trying to break onto the world scene. His sister was teaching at the same high school I was at the time though I wouldn’t have known her from a brick wall.

Will’s death rated an overpriced blurb on the obituary page. The newspaper only allowed a twitterish amount of character space for free and anything beyond “he’s dead” was at the family’s expense. This former junior tennis star with the wealthy successful father rated a front page story. His personal failures were downgraded with a heapful of sympathy and his squandered potential as a human being lamented. It pissed me off at the time and still rankles when things like the MJ memorial come up. I am still uncertain that “fame” or family connections or “talent” make one person worth more than another when all is said and done.

There are undoubtedly many, many other families laying loved ones to rest this week. People who’s passing will be barely noted by the world that came most closely in contact with them, forget the wider one. People whose characters weren’t questionable. People who didn’t use their bad childhoods as excuses to avoid growing up. People who manned up and took care of their debts to others. People who believed that respect, money, career, etc. is earned and not an entitlement.

I feel sorry for his mother. I feel for his children, his daughter especially who tried to defend him in her own little girl way, but I don’t think he merited the fuss and I am not looking forward to his “Elvis has left the building” period that is sure to come.

A PhD in Grieving


My mom discovered the grief books that Rob and I have on the bookshelf in our living room. They are IKEA, very lovely floor to ceiling of my childhood fantasy sort of thing – the shelves, not the books. The books were never part of my little girl dreams although curiously, all my Barbies were widows. Vietnam war widows. And that’s because I wasn’t allowed to have Ken dolls and so I improvised with my brother’s G.I. Joe’s, but there is so little you can do with Joe – dressed in camouflage as he was – but send him back to the jungle, where he inevitably died because Walter Cronkite told us every night at dinner that it was a tragedy so many men were dying over there.

But the grief books. Just two made the trip from Iowa with me – my favorites – C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, which is beautiful and moving and so very true, and I Am Grieving As Fast As I Can, which seemed geared more to women older than myself with children grown but I liked her tone and optimism. I don’t recall Rob’s books. Mom hasn’t read them – yet – and might not because I got her Broken Open (which I had heard was good) and is chomping at the bit to get her hands on Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking.

Since she has been here, reading about grief is about all Mom has done when we were at the house. She holes up in the living room or upstairs in the bedroom or hides on the deck – anywhere she can be alone. She finds even light conversation going on while she is reading to be the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

I have not really let myself be drawn into a grief/widow conversation with her. I am not comfortable at all being the mentor in this area and am done with the idea of mentoring in general. I have come to believe that the grieving will go and do as they will regardless and the best thing is too simply smile benevolently, nod and be around later for the debriefing.

” A year from now I don’t want to be one of those women who is still tearing up and choking whenever she mentions her husband,” she told me.

I tried to tell her that it’s all relative and that if one makes up one’s mind to move on then that’s what happens – more or less – but that we really can’t stop the “tearing and choking” sometimes.

She didn’t want to hear that and changed the subject. But she is seven months out and change. She is at the beginning of make or break and I am not going to discourage her. This is a crucial time and one is what one believes oneself to be – eventually.

Mom is from the camp of “pre-grievers”. Care-takers of loved ones with long term, and usually terminal, illnesses will often say they did some of their grieving along the care-taking route and are more anxious earlier on to get back to some semblance of their former selves and lives or to build new ones.

Pre-grief is a controversial topic among the widowed and many will flatly claim that it is nonsense and those who subscribe to the theory are grief avoiders. First of all, no one can avoid grief and second, it’s a tad presumptuous to define someone else’s experience of loss based solely on your own experience. I personally believe in pre-grief because that is my experience and I know I am in the minority because in our society admitting that there is nothing that can be done medically and preparing for death instead of engaging in pointless and quality of life ending interventions is what most people know of as “normal”. And finally, anticipatory grief is a real and recognized by medical and mental health professionals, and in my opinion is not given its due because we are a society that thinks death should rarely be happening except at the golden age of 90 or so and with loved ones gathered for a final Kodak moment – and maybe there are balloons and fluffy puppies to hand out after with the cake and ice cream.

Right now Mom is plowing through Broken Open, which I only gave her because I’d promised to find the Didion and didn’t. I knew the stories and “suggestions” would be taken too much to heart, but I can’t fault her for wanting to move on. She gave up a lot of years to Dad’s drinking and then his illnesses. She should move on and as fast or slow as she pleases, but she isn’t going move beyond the teary eyes or the sudden loss for words or the memories that pop up like word bubbles over cartoon characters heads. But she’ll figure that out. Everyone does.

Dead Icons


The “power of three” is not to be trifled with and is not subject to earthly explanation. In the celebrity realm the more famous or iconic you are, the more danger you are in of succumbing to the it.

Michael Jackson could attest to this were he not dead. He is the third in the Grim Reaper’s trio of famous recalls this week, Ed McMahon and Farah Fawcett having gone on ahead.

According to my husband, talk radio was ablaze with the news of Jackson’s death on his drive home from work late this afternoon.

“Shepard Smith sounded like he was about to burst into tears,” he told me in a bemused tone.

The Facebook and Twitter feeds were running about fifty-fifty between genuine grief and good riddance. I understand those who feel Jackson’s loss as deeply as though he were a friend or extended family member. He grew up with some of us. We remember he and his brothers. And he become a pop-icon to a generation or two as a grown man during the 80’s, leading him to self-christen himself the “King of Pop” and lead them along with his fantasy view of himself and the world.

I remember the cartoon.

I can still listen to Jackson 5 stuff without cringing – almost. But I can’t listen to Thriller. Although I think the LP is still at my mom’s, and I danced along with everyone else in college, Jackson was a pedophile and his music – for me – is as tainted as he was. Being dead doesn’t change that for me.

I read a tweet that summed it up nicely:

RT @Sarcomical: media/individuals seem to be mourning loss of what Jackson represented for them in 80’s. not the human he recently was.

Poor Farrah and Ed – people who probably deserve more memorializing than they will get now that the behemoth that was Michael Jackson has eclipsed them with his passing. I don’t think talent or a long past celebrity is reason enough to overlook the kind of man he eventually revealed himself to be.

Just saying.