This past week has reminded me of the times I spent with my mother watching television when she constantly remarked on how many actors in the movie were either dead or looked old enough to be dead. As a child, I had no sense of mortality and found her remarks to be unnecessarily morbid. What purpose could it serve her to dwell on the inevitability of life, I would think while rolling my eyes. Why did she even care about the personal lives of these people when she did not know them and sometimes did not even approve of them? I remember trying to change the subject and point out how we should try to enjoy the movie for its entertainment value and not dwell on who was dead. There was always a sadness about it that she did not shake, accompanied by her inability to stop watching the same movies as frequently as long as the VCR tapes lasted.
As the circle of life goes, I was mourning for individuals this past week that I had never known personally nor could I say that they were in my thoughts more than fleetingly over the years. What I realized is that while I feel empathy for their families and believe their deaths were untimely, unfair or premature, I realized that what I am actually mourning is the loss of part of my cultural identity and, yes, part of my youth. The inexplicable understanding that I was experiencing what my mother must have felt all those years—my youth slipping away and the passing of time, brought about one of those reality shifts that make me uncomfortable.
All of these individuals left an imprint on me and took up space in my life at different times through music, laughter or the confoundedness of what creates a cultural phenomenon. Associations between parts of my life and Michael Jackson's music will always be with me, just as it will be for others. In no way different was the memory of the banter between Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, Farrah Fawcett's hair, Karl Malden's American Express commercials, all of David Carridine's characters and Billy Mays' commercials. To know they have passed on is symbolic of the passing of time and our own mortality. Yes, that grim and morbid attitude I believed to be unwarranted in my mother, I am feeling now about my generation and its contemporary cultural identity and wish I had not been so harsh in my criticism of her.
On the one side, I find it amusing that we adopt these celebrities and bring them into our homes as if we considered them a part of our family. We learn about them, we cheer with them, we keep track of their children and their relationships as if it mattered to them that we know or gave us a particular significance having this information. We feel we have earned a status that gives us the right to criticize them. Maybe that is what makes the loss seem so personal. Or maybe when our society loses cultural icons, we reflect on our own losses and missed opportunities.
Perhaps that it what my mother felt. I can only speculate. What I realize now is that every generation must feel that sadness as they age; watching younger generations replace them. What I know is that that June 2009 was a month of hard losses we will all think about for a long time.
