With this week’s poem in mind, I wanted to make space for us to talk about public figures we’ve lost who continue to mean a great deal to us. At times, I think it can almost feel embarrassing to grieve someone you didn’t know personally but you feel what you feel. Let’s talk about it.
*Saeed checks Twitter and sees what’s going on in the UK*
*Saeed looks directly at camera*
*Saeed shrugs*
Let’s still talk about it anyway. I’ll go first. In 2010, when fashion designer Alexander McQueen died, I was absolutely devastated. His work (and the ideas animating his vision) mean so much to me. Every time you see a dress mentioned in one of my poems, it’s a rough and tattered McQueen gown in my imagination.
I was sitting on my couch in the half dark of early night in the midwest (9sih) when I saw that Chadwick Boseman died. I gasped and burst into tears. It still hits me hard when I see videos of him and I am reminded of how talented he was watching his films and it feels unfair that he's gone.
Yeah, that was... and still is... a really hard loss. Knowing that he was living with all that pain in private while navigating such a public life is overwhelming.
I always told people I was gonna have to take a personal day when Toni Morrison died. But as it happened, I was in Columbus, looking at apartments when she passed away. I was so stunned, I just walked until I found a park and wandered around for a while, looking at trees in a daze. WHEW.
I was at work and my friend texted me. I had just seen her documentary at the DIA - couple weeks before. She’s my fav author and I made it my mission to meet her.
It stunned me how sad I was when Walter Becker of Steely Dan died a few years ago. I cried like someone I knew died and I could not put my finger on why. Looking back, it's like you said: his work had so much to do with how I saw myself at a very formative age. The music - and by extension the band - felt permanent to me, and knowing that it was suddenly done hurt a lot.
I felt this way when John Lennon was killed (I was 18) and again when David Bowie died. They embodied some kind of spirit that resonated with me when I was very young, and it will always be a part of how I see myself. I know several people who feel like this about Prince. Their mourning for him was intense.
I think Aaliyah’s death was the first that hit me hard. I was in high school and I was like, if she could die so young then who am I to be here? There have been others over the years but most recently, Chadwick and Cicely Tyson have been the passings that come to me in waves of loss. The former bc imagine hiding so much pain from the outside while giving so much hope to others. Ms. Tyson passed on my grandma’s birthday which came a couple months after I just loss her. Ms.Tyson felt like peace and perseverance, just like my grandma. I didnt know these people personally but seeing how they lived, the legacies, my own, it all feels personal
Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries. It wasn't like I was sitting around listening to The Cranberries all the time, but when she died I felt like I needed a couple days to just curl up in the fetal position. I'm 41, so their album No Need to Argue was the coolest thing in the world when I was in 7th grade, when I was finding a freedom to fall in love with music and art that felt like it was really mine and not handed to me by an adult. And her voice still feels otherworldly.
Woof, yes. I'm the same age and had a similar response when she died. Finding music at that age on my own - like you said, art that wasn't handed to us by an adult - was so special, and there are a few women that sit in that pantheon along with Dolores.
I had just finished my first reread of Octavia Butler's books as an adult and I was stunned to see how much they'd shaped me. I saw on the jacket that we lived in the city so I looked her up to maybe attend a reading, write a fan mail, something. Only to find out she'd passed the week before. I'm still mourning, I feel like her books parented me.
When Mary Oliver died, I felt like part of me was gone. Her poems have appeared to me in nearly every moment of need in my life & she was one of my first queer role models. I was teaching & had to ask someone to cover my homeroom for 10 minutes so I could compose myself.
Freddie Mercury, absolutely. Queen was THE band of the moment when I was starting high school in Argentina in '83, "The Game" had come out at the time and I lived and breathed the band. When he passed, I was just devastated because I felt we were kindred spirits in our Virgo weirdness and airulophilia (his birthday is two days after mine).
The next time was when George Harrison passed. Again, absolute devastation and tears. I was already in America by then but I went right back to my late teenage cousins playing The White Album for me when I was 4 and right there I fell in love with him and his music.
You can probably see a theme here, how music is huge in my life. The last time I was a mess was when Gustavo Cerati, leader of the most important rock en español band (Soda Stereo), passed after a few years in a coma following a stroke that hit his language and motor skills center after a show in Venezuela. That was my 20s band - I saw them in concert a ton of times and he had the habit of popping up at shows his bestie's band was playing and going on stage and playing with them. It was just... a lot.
When Stephen Sondheim died, I was an absolute wreck. We had just seen Encanto with our kids for the first time - so I was already emotional - and I was still sitting in my seat in the theater when my sister's text came through. Like many already mentioned, it wasn't a surprise, but it was also a shock. I cried hard enough that my kids were concerned, and spent the rest of the evening lying in my room in the dark watching clips of performances and interviews. His work informed so much of how I move through the world, and also was a major foundation for my relationship with my own dad, which is complicated and lovely at the same time - much like Sondheim's work itself.
brb streaming "un-hummable songs" for the rest of the day, don't mind me.
The only comfort when he passed was that I was in NYC with my theater-loving friends at the time, we watched so many Sondheim clips on YouTube that night.
OH what a comfort that must have been. I didn't get to have that, but I'm really grateful that my husband immediately understood and just went about the rest of the evening with the kids like I wasn't even home. They all came and checked on me here and there, and the kids - bless them - put up with me being like, "OKAY now I need to show you THIS" all weekend.
When I heard that Neil Peart (drummer for Rush) died, I sobbed so hard that I nearly wrecked my car during rush hour traffic on 315. After losing everything I had ever feared losing, it was his example, after his wife and daughter died in the same year, that gave me the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other and just. Keep. Moving. Forward.
I'm still not over Prince's death. I didn't realize how much I depended on seeing a live show every few years to give me my dose of inspiration and that feeling of when you see an artist directly channeling the universe until he passed. He was a part of my life in a much deeper way than I had realized.
Me too on Robin Williams. It was salt in the wounds the way his daughter was viscously bullied by trolls on Twitter after he died. They posted doctored grotesque photos of his mangled body. I hope they all rot in hell.
Robin Williams really took the breath out of me when I got the news. I was in a crowded public place and overheard someone else receive the news, and I immediately started crying.
It took me a while to be able to revisit his work and interviews. It was just too emotional to see him, especially the movies that meant so much to me growing up.
I still feel the loss of David Bowie, as much for what his music meant to me over the years, as it was the first of a number of losses and frankly terrible things that happened in 2016.
As a child of the 80's and a Pittsburgh native, Fred Rogers. I watched the documentary about him on a red-eye and my eyes were leaking throughout.
Whitney Houston's death felt, and still feels, like it's left a gaping hole in our culture (as you referred to so powerfully in your poem Saeed). And Chadwick Boseman.
Just went thru this a few weeks ago when my favourite author, Fred Buechner, died. He was 96 and it wasn't unexpected, but it was something I'd dreaded for years. I wanted to be in a forest, to weep and walk in the shade so badly but live in a place where the nearest one (or so I thought) was hundreds of miles away. Ended up writing about it and realizing that the grief I felt for Fred's leaving was also wrapped up in other griefs that continue taking their sneaky-bitch circuitous paths through our hearts as they do. My grief for Fred was specific and also universal. Thanks for this post, SJ.
Prince. He died April 21 which I will always remember because that's my father's birthday. It links them now forever though my dad probably wouldn't have been able to name a Prince song. The first 45 record I ever bought with my own money was "Little Red Corvette." Prince was a musical genius and I will always crank up his tunes when they are on.
I felt utterly gutted when Prince died. I was giving a lecture at the fashion college where I taught back then and always keep my phone on the lectern when I teach, to check the time. A friend texted "Prince just died" and I just stopped, in the middle of my lesson, dismissed my class, and went home to pay tribute by listening to his music. I can't really think of any artist whose work influenced me more--his utter delight in his craft, his versatility, his fluidity, how he showed you could love God and still love sex, how creation seemed so joyful for him. What a gift he and his work was.
I was absolutely shaken when Taylor Hawkins, drummer for Foo Fighters, died. It was so shocking. I had just watched their (not so great but fun) movie and read Dave Grohl’s book The Storyteller, he spoke so deeply about his bond with Taylor. I spent the whole weekend in a funk and wept more than I thought I would. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the band, and Dave, we’re going through. He was so talented. Hard to be a drummer for a drummer’s band!
I read a great quote (tweet I think) that said we mourn famous people not because we knew them but because they helped us know ourselves. I always carry that one when I think about the loss of Selena, who was the first famous person who looked and sounded like my friends and me (back in the 90s). Her loss was profound to so many folks.
Prince and Carrie Fisher. I associated both with growing up so they felt like people I knew. And appreciated Fisher's frankness regarding her bipolar disorder... and the fact that Fisher and her mom died so close together...it was just ... sad. There was this sort of echoing sadness in 2016. It SEEMED like so many high profile deaths... like consistent gut punches. And that was such a bad year in that I felt like the U.S. was not redeemable, just screwed. So, for me anyway, each celebrity death that year felt that much more personal.
And Maya Angelou...I only saw/heard her read one in person and she was magic. And I guess some silly part of me didn't think she would die before me, in spite of ... basic math.
Having grown up fairly sheltered and coming to "culture" pretty late in life, I can remember when icons of my era (GenX) died surprisingly/suddenly (River Phoenix, Kurt Kobain, Shannon Hoon, Tupac, Biggie) and when people we had "grown up with" died - all seemingly way too young - and my friends were very devastated (Bowie, George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Prince, Whitney, Natalie Cole, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and more of course), but I don't remember ever FEELING the death (of someone I didn't know personally) until RBG passed.
In a year that felt like it had already taken everything I had to give, I almost didn't even believe it was real. I left my house and went around the corner to the brewery that had been my "spot" pre-COVID and where one of my best friends worked behind the bar. This was one of the very first times I had even left the house, let alone gone to a bar. When I walked in and locked eyes with my friend, he left customers mid pour and waiting in line and came over and just wrapped me in the biggest hug. "I just heard," he said, "Josh called a few minutes ago."
I had almost been on autopilot until that moment and when he hugged me - knowing what was wrong before I said it - I lost it. The tears just started rolling down my face. I sat out back, behind the bar, and played Jennifer Hudson singing, "I'll Fight" (the song from the RBG documentary) on repeat and cried and cried and cried.
It was almost one year, to the day, since my dad had died (suddenly), and I swear there are still days when I forget either one of them are gone... I like to believe they are both in Heaven and she's explaining, to him, all the things he never understood about equality/equity/justice in our country. And that he's asking her to help him watch over me because he's worried about me, in light of what's happening in said country today.
I still get a sinking feeling in my chest when I think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Perhaps because her passing represented this loss of hope, this turning point in our landscape, I feel her loss acutely. Also, seconding Mary Oliver...
I remember the two of us waiting HOURS in line at The Met to see the Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" exhibit a year after he passed. I think it's the longest that either of us have ever waited in line for anything. Totally worth it. It was such an emotional journey.
Luther Vandross. My dad was obsessed with Luther Vandross. That's all he/we listened to growing up. After my dad died in '97 then I was 16, I couldn't listen to Luther without my chest feeling hallowed out. It wasn't until I was in college in the early aughts that I could listen to him without feeling robbed by death. When Luther died in 2005 it felt like a mean girl at school was taunting me.
I remember when David Bowie died, it was one of those losses mourned by many that I was aware of not really understanding because i wasn’t familiar with this music. and I had the distinct feeling of considering - wow, all of the artists that i love and hold deal may day in my lifetime - I will mourn too!
So many musicians, writers, and artists. The suicides really stay with me. I recast the years their works were keeping me going with a shadow of their now more clearly understood pain behind them. Even though I wasn't a particular fan, Philip Seymour Hoffman's overdose guts me. Like, everyone maybe thought you were at a place you could coast from, including you yourself. Knowing that Prince was in so much physical pain while we lapped up all he gave us. I don't think we're vultures or something evil like that, but we are encouraged to forget or overlook that artists are still literal human beings with bodies and minds like ours. So, yes, if there is someone who wrestled life and gave us something beautiful and real from it, then left us any other way than at 97 in their sleep, I feel it keenly.
Naomi Judd’s passing just breaks me! Also since I'm from Pittsburgh...Mr Rodgers! Growing up in the area he lived he had a presence that we always felt! Even though I've moved away, his loss took me back to my childhood and how I felt when I saw him!
Late to the thread, but 2016 was just so filled with loss. Losing David Bowie and Alan Rickman in January and then Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in December, it was all so bleak.
Burst into tears in Gail’s coffee on Portobello road when Alan Rickman died... I also sometimes have felt real grief thinking about the lives of trans and queer elders as I learn mor about how we have always existed. I sometimes struggle to not feel guilt about how much I get done or how happy I am not even though I have so much more freedom than so many others did, but I try to remember and continue the legacy by being out in my most authentic presentation
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - the man made it to 100 but his poetry just so formative to me as a teenager that there was something comforting knowing we were on the same planet.
For me or was the death of Christopher Reeves. When I was a small child I watched his Superman movies constantly. When her had his accident there was this sense that he was somehow going to walk again. Then when I saw he died while I was on a public computer outside the cafeteria at college I just went outside, say on a bench and wept.
Michael Jackson. I remember where I was when I heard the news: apartment hunting, and I'd just come up from the subway. That night, it felt like all of NYC had his music on blast. I still remember the sheer intensity of emotion my child self held. Like, I tried to Tooth Fairy (ferry?) a letter to him, utterly sure it would reach him and baffled that it didn't. For so many people in the 80s, MJ was the ideal boyfriend/son/brother/friend/cousin. Maybe K-pop taps into that intensity today. Beyoncé, for sure. MJ was Icarus to the end: people remember his fall, but who still remembers how high he flew? How easily we accepted that he bent physics and charmed galaxies with a smile?
I came undone when Dana Reeves, Christopher Reeves widow died, leaving their young son an orphan. It felt cruel. She’d never smoked and died of lung cancer. Part of why it hurt was my nephew’s father died when my nephew was four, that had happened eight years before Dana died and that visceral imprint of losing one’s parents young and how everyone thinks people will step in and step up, but everyone is so discombobulated, nothing makes sense. Plus the sorrow of working at Boston Childrens and them letting a 12 year old Black boy die, rather than get a heart transplant, because he didn’t have a foster family. Our world is cruel and racist AF.
I was sitting on my couch in the half dark of early night in the midwest (9sih) when I saw that Chadwick Boseman died. I gasped and burst into tears. It still hits me hard when I see videos of him and I am reminded of how talented he was watching his films and it feels unfair that he's gone.
Yeah, that was... and still is... a really hard loss. Knowing that he was living with all that pain in private while navigating such a public life is overwhelming.
Toni Morrison
I always told people I was gonna have to take a personal day when Toni Morrison died. But as it happened, I was in Columbus, looking at apartments when she passed away. I was so stunned, I just walked until I found a park and wandered around for a while, looking at trees in a daze. WHEW.
I was at work and my friend texted me. I had just seen her documentary at the DIA - couple weeks before. She’s my fav author and I made it my mission to meet her.
It stunned me how sad I was when Walter Becker of Steely Dan died a few years ago. I cried like someone I knew died and I could not put my finger on why. Looking back, it's like you said: his work had so much to do with how I saw myself at a very formative age. The music - and by extension the band - felt permanent to me, and knowing that it was suddenly done hurt a lot.
I felt this way when John Lennon was killed (I was 18) and again when David Bowie died. They embodied some kind of spirit that resonated with me when I was very young, and it will always be a part of how I see myself. I know several people who feel like this about Prince. Their mourning for him was intense.
I think Aaliyah’s death was the first that hit me hard. I was in high school and I was like, if she could die so young then who am I to be here? There have been others over the years but most recently, Chadwick and Cicely Tyson have been the passings that come to me in waves of loss. The former bc imagine hiding so much pain from the outside while giving so much hope to others. Ms. Tyson passed on my grandma’s birthday which came a couple months after I just loss her. Ms.Tyson felt like peace and perseverance, just like my grandma. I didnt know these people personally but seeing how they lived, the legacies, my own, it all feels personal
I was really sad at the time, but only now, as an adult, do I have an appreciation for how young Aaliyah was when she died. Such a tragedy.
Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries. It wasn't like I was sitting around listening to The Cranberries all the time, but when she died I felt like I needed a couple days to just curl up in the fetal position. I'm 41, so their album No Need to Argue was the coolest thing in the world when I was in 7th grade, when I was finding a freedom to fall in love with music and art that felt like it was really mine and not handed to me by an adult. And her voice still feels otherworldly.
Woof, yes. I'm the same age and had a similar response when she died. Finding music at that age on my own - like you said, art that wasn't handed to us by an adult - was so special, and there are a few women that sit in that pantheon along with Dolores.
I had just finished my first reread of Octavia Butler's books as an adult and I was stunned to see how much they'd shaped me. I saw on the jacket that we lived in the city so I looked her up to maybe attend a reading, write a fan mail, something. Only to find out she'd passed the week before. I'm still mourning, I feel like her books parented me.
When Mary Oliver died, I felt like part of me was gone. Her poems have appeared to me in nearly every moment of need in my life & she was one of my first queer role models. I was teaching & had to ask someone to cover my homeroom for 10 minutes so I could compose myself.
Freddie Mercury, absolutely. Queen was THE band of the moment when I was starting high school in Argentina in '83, "The Game" had come out at the time and I lived and breathed the band. When he passed, I was just devastated because I felt we were kindred spirits in our Virgo weirdness and airulophilia (his birthday is two days after mine).
The next time was when George Harrison passed. Again, absolute devastation and tears. I was already in America by then but I went right back to my late teenage cousins playing The White Album for me when I was 4 and right there I fell in love with him and his music.
You can probably see a theme here, how music is huge in my life. The last time I was a mess was when Gustavo Cerati, leader of the most important rock en español band (Soda Stereo), passed after a few years in a coma following a stroke that hit his language and motor skills center after a show in Venezuela. That was my 20s band - I saw them in concert a ton of times and he had the habit of popping up at shows his bestie's band was playing and going on stage and playing with them. It was just... a lot.
When Stephen Sondheim died, I was an absolute wreck. We had just seen Encanto with our kids for the first time - so I was already emotional - and I was still sitting in my seat in the theater when my sister's text came through. Like many already mentioned, it wasn't a surprise, but it was also a shock. I cried hard enough that my kids were concerned, and spent the rest of the evening lying in my room in the dark watching clips of performances and interviews. His work informed so much of how I move through the world, and also was a major foundation for my relationship with my own dad, which is complicated and lovely at the same time - much like Sondheim's work itself.
brb streaming "un-hummable songs" for the rest of the day, don't mind me.
The only comfort when he passed was that I was in NYC with my theater-loving friends at the time, we watched so many Sondheim clips on YouTube that night.
OH what a comfort that must have been. I didn't get to have that, but I'm really grateful that my husband immediately understood and just went about the rest of the evening with the kids like I wasn't even home. They all came and checked on me here and there, and the kids - bless them - put up with me being like, "OKAY now I need to show you THIS" all weekend.
When I heard that Neil Peart (drummer for Rush) died, I sobbed so hard that I nearly wrecked my car during rush hour traffic on 315. After losing everything I had ever feared losing, it was his example, after his wife and daughter died in the same year, that gave me the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other and just. Keep. Moving. Forward.
I'm still not over Prince's death. I didn't realize how much I depended on seeing a live show every few years to give me my dose of inspiration and that feeling of when you see an artist directly channeling the universe until he passed. He was a part of my life in a much deeper way than I had realized.
Gil Scott-Heron's death should not have been a shock, but it hurt much more than I expected.
Whitney Houston, especially how she passed had me feeling empty. Also, when Heath Ledger passed too.
Oh yes, Heath Ledger. I felt so much for Michelle Williams and their daughter, even more than the performances we would never see.
The death of Robin Williams hit me hard. This many years later, it's still bittersweet to watch his work and interviews.
Me too on Robin Williams. It was salt in the wounds the way his daughter was viscously bullied by trolls on Twitter after he died. They posted doctored grotesque photos of his mangled body. I hope they all rot in hell.
Robin Williams really took the breath out of me when I got the news. I was in a crowded public place and overheard someone else receive the news, and I immediately started crying.
It took me a while to be able to revisit his work and interviews. It was just too emotional to see him, especially the movies that meant so much to me growing up.
I still feel the loss of David Bowie, as much for what his music meant to me over the years, as it was the first of a number of losses and frankly terrible things that happened in 2016.
As a child of the 80's and a Pittsburgh native, Fred Rogers. I watched the documentary about him on a red-eye and my eyes were leaking throughout.
Whitney Houston's death felt, and still feels, like it's left a gaping hole in our culture (as you referred to so powerfully in your poem Saeed). And Chadwick Boseman.
Just went thru this a few weeks ago when my favourite author, Fred Buechner, died. He was 96 and it wasn't unexpected, but it was something I'd dreaded for years. I wanted to be in a forest, to weep and walk in the shade so badly but live in a place where the nearest one (or so I thought) was hundreds of miles away. Ended up writing about it and realizing that the grief I felt for Fred's leaving was also wrapped up in other griefs that continue taking their sneaky-bitch circuitous paths through our hearts as they do. My grief for Fred was specific and also universal. Thanks for this post, SJ.
Prince. He died April 21 which I will always remember because that's my father's birthday. It links them now forever though my dad probably wouldn't have been able to name a Prince song. The first 45 record I ever bought with my own money was "Little Red Corvette." Prince was a musical genius and I will always crank up his tunes when they are on.
I felt utterly gutted when Prince died. I was giving a lecture at the fashion college where I taught back then and always keep my phone on the lectern when I teach, to check the time. A friend texted "Prince just died" and I just stopped, in the middle of my lesson, dismissed my class, and went home to pay tribute by listening to his music. I can't really think of any artist whose work influenced me more--his utter delight in his craft, his versatility, his fluidity, how he showed you could love God and still love sex, how creation seemed so joyful for him. What a gift he and his work was.
I was absolutely shaken when Taylor Hawkins, drummer for Foo Fighters, died. It was so shocking. I had just watched their (not so great but fun) movie and read Dave Grohl’s book The Storyteller, he spoke so deeply about his bond with Taylor. I spent the whole weekend in a funk and wept more than I thought I would. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the band, and Dave, we’re going through. He was so talented. Hard to be a drummer for a drummer’s band!
I read a great quote (tweet I think) that said we mourn famous people not because we knew them but because they helped us know ourselves. I always carry that one when I think about the loss of Selena, who was the first famous person who looked and sounded like my friends and me (back in the 90s). Her loss was profound to so many folks.
Prince and Carrie Fisher. I associated both with growing up so they felt like people I knew. And appreciated Fisher's frankness regarding her bipolar disorder... and the fact that Fisher and her mom died so close together...it was just ... sad. There was this sort of echoing sadness in 2016. It SEEMED like so many high profile deaths... like consistent gut punches. And that was such a bad year in that I felt like the U.S. was not redeemable, just screwed. So, for me anyway, each celebrity death that year felt that much more personal.
And Maya Angelou...I only saw/heard her read one in person and she was magic. And I guess some silly part of me didn't think she would die before me, in spite of ... basic math.
Having grown up fairly sheltered and coming to "culture" pretty late in life, I can remember when icons of my era (GenX) died surprisingly/suddenly (River Phoenix, Kurt Kobain, Shannon Hoon, Tupac, Biggie) and when people we had "grown up with" died - all seemingly way too young - and my friends were very devastated (Bowie, George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Prince, Whitney, Natalie Cole, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and more of course), but I don't remember ever FEELING the death (of someone I didn't know personally) until RBG passed.
In a year that felt like it had already taken everything I had to give, I almost didn't even believe it was real. I left my house and went around the corner to the brewery that had been my "spot" pre-COVID and where one of my best friends worked behind the bar. This was one of the very first times I had even left the house, let alone gone to a bar. When I walked in and locked eyes with my friend, he left customers mid pour and waiting in line and came over and just wrapped me in the biggest hug. "I just heard," he said, "Josh called a few minutes ago."
I had almost been on autopilot until that moment and when he hugged me - knowing what was wrong before I said it - I lost it. The tears just started rolling down my face. I sat out back, behind the bar, and played Jennifer Hudson singing, "I'll Fight" (the song from the RBG documentary) on repeat and cried and cried and cried.
It was almost one year, to the day, since my dad had died (suddenly), and I swear there are still days when I forget either one of them are gone... I like to believe they are both in Heaven and she's explaining, to him, all the things he never understood about equality/equity/justice in our country. And that he's asking her to help him watch over me because he's worried about me, in light of what's happening in said country today.
Maybe I'll write a poem/story about that - RBG and MY DAD having a conversation in heaven...
I still get a sinking feeling in my chest when I think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Perhaps because her passing represented this loss of hope, this turning point in our landscape, I feel her loss acutely. Also, seconding Mary Oliver...
I remember the two of us waiting HOURS in line at The Met to see the Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" exhibit a year after he passed. I think it's the longest that either of us have ever waited in line for anything. Totally worth it. It was such an emotional journey.
I remember that line to get in at the Met.
McQueen was just made of magic.
Agreed. It was all really magical.
Maya Angelou. Toni Morrison. Their words gave me words, and their stories broke my heart and then put it back together differently.
Luther Vandross. My dad was obsessed with Luther Vandross. That's all he/we listened to growing up. After my dad died in '97 then I was 16, I couldn't listen to Luther without my chest feeling hallowed out. It wasn't until I was in college in the early aughts that I could listen to him without feeling robbed by death. When Luther died in 2005 it felt like a mean girl at school was taunting me.
I remember when David Bowie died, it was one of those losses mourned by many that I was aware of not really understanding because i wasn’t familiar with this music. and I had the distinct feeling of considering - wow, all of the artists that i love and hold deal may day in my lifetime - I will mourn too!
So many musicians, writers, and artists. The suicides really stay with me. I recast the years their works were keeping me going with a shadow of their now more clearly understood pain behind them. Even though I wasn't a particular fan, Philip Seymour Hoffman's overdose guts me. Like, everyone maybe thought you were at a place you could coast from, including you yourself. Knowing that Prince was in so much physical pain while we lapped up all he gave us. I don't think we're vultures or something evil like that, but we are encouraged to forget or overlook that artists are still literal human beings with bodies and minds like ours. So, yes, if there is someone who wrestled life and gave us something beautiful and real from it, then left us any other way than at 97 in their sleep, I feel it keenly.
Naomi Judd’s passing just breaks me! Also since I'm from Pittsburgh...Mr Rodgers! Growing up in the area he lived he had a presence that we always felt! Even though I've moved away, his loss took me back to my childhood and how I felt when I saw him!
Late to the thread, but 2016 was just so filled with loss. Losing David Bowie and Alan Rickman in January and then Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in December, it was all so bleak.
Burst into tears in Gail’s coffee on Portobello road when Alan Rickman died... I also sometimes have felt real grief thinking about the lives of trans and queer elders as I learn mor about how we have always existed. I sometimes struggle to not feel guilt about how much I get done or how happy I am not even though I have so much more freedom than so many others did, but I try to remember and continue the legacy by being out in my most authentic presentation
Struggling as a person who grew up in a British colony to feel anything tbh
oh am talking about betsy in the uk news 😬
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - the man made it to 100 but his poetry just so formative to me as a teenager that there was something comforting knowing we were on the same planet.
Anthony Bourdain was a rough one. I can't even hardly see a photo of him without being deeply sad.
For me or was the death of Christopher Reeves. When I was a small child I watched his Superman movies constantly. When her had his accident there was this sense that he was somehow going to walk again. Then when I saw he died while I was on a public computer outside the cafeteria at college I just went outside, say on a bench and wept.
Michael Jackson. I remember where I was when I heard the news: apartment hunting, and I'd just come up from the subway. That night, it felt like all of NYC had his music on blast. I still remember the sheer intensity of emotion my child self held. Like, I tried to Tooth Fairy (ferry?) a letter to him, utterly sure it would reach him and baffled that it didn't. For so many people in the 80s, MJ was the ideal boyfriend/son/brother/friend/cousin. Maybe K-pop taps into that intensity today. Beyoncé, for sure. MJ was Icarus to the end: people remember his fall, but who still remembers how high he flew? How easily we accepted that he bent physics and charmed galaxies with a smile?
I came undone when Dana Reeves, Christopher Reeves widow died, leaving their young son an orphan. It felt cruel. She’d never smoked and died of lung cancer. Part of why it hurt was my nephew’s father died when my nephew was four, that had happened eight years before Dana died and that visceral imprint of losing one’s parents young and how everyone thinks people will step in and step up, but everyone is so discombobulated, nothing makes sense. Plus the sorrow of working at Boston Childrens and them letting a 12 year old Black boy die, rather than get a heart transplant, because he didn’t have a foster family. Our world is cruel and racist AF.