Death

I find things fascinating that perhaps I shouldn't. I'm curious about death. I'm not morbid, or goth, and I certainly don't want to kill myself. Rather, I'm interested in reading how others died. Especially historic people: actors, inventors, kings, business people...you name it, if they died, I want to know why. Occasionally, I find myself researching the deaths of people who were for the most part nameless faces in the crowd.

The first time I laughed out loud at something on television was during an old episode of "I Love Lucy." Everyone says it was one of the best programs ever made. Still, with Saturday morning cartoons and other shows aimed at children, with silly creatures doing odd things, you'd think I'd laugh. But I didn't. Bugs Bunny in drag wasn't funny; neither was Gargamel when the Smurfs managed to foil him again. But that crazy redhead in all her fabulousness proved more engaging than any prettied up male rabbit or fictional blue gnomes. And she was in black and white.

I fell in love with Lucille Ball. Not the character she played, but the actress herself. I loved Lucy. She made me laugh. I wanted her to know the profound impact she had on my life. In all my young years, I had barely cracked a smile when it came to children's programming, but this lady had me roaring with laughter in her hare-brained schemes with Ethel. I set out to write her. Sadly, by the time I had located her mailing address, Ms. Ball died of an aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989. My letter was never sent.

So, there's was never closure. People need closure to say the things they never got to when a person was alive. Lucy's death weighed heavy on my heart. I know I didn't know her personally, but she made me laugh. I also know I wasn't the only one she made laugh. Scores of Americans and folks abroad have been enlightened by her, but she spoke to me. And I never got to speak back to her. I never got to tell her how she made my tiny bedroom television worth the space it was taking up. She left me, and the world, too soon.

It took a long time before anyone close to me died. I was 29 when an older friend succumbed to liver disease. Janet was closer to me than I was to her. So, her death, while sad, didn't cause me to lose sleep. She had been suffering for quite some time, and I last visited her just two days before she passed. I felt closure.

Up until 2007, all my grandparents were living. Then, one by one they died. Grandpa, Grandma, Grandpa, Grandma. Granted, some of them had lost "grand" status a long time ago. When I was a kid, we were close. As an adult, I became foreign to each of them. Mostly because of me, but due in part to their social beliefs. The emotional distance of my relationship to each of them made me related by blood alone and not by the moments that shape the love for grandparent to child.

After each death, my parents and siblings would band together and reach out to aunts, uncles, cousins, and they'd form a plan. Typically, I offered to be there, but didn't want any part of the coordinating. Closure wasn't in my plan. It was facetime I was concerned with. I could provide emotional support for those who needed closure. Bonds with grandma or grandpa were so strong some relatives couldn't bare to experience life without them. Sure, I'd be a shoulder to cry on. I'd even wear cotton, or some other material that would sop up weepy sobs.

Funerals aren't fun. They should be. It's typically the only reason my extended family gets together. Always a time for celebration. Each time someone dies, we get together at the parlor and talk about how long it's been since we've seen one another, and what we're doing with our lives, and how we should get together on purpose, for a purpose, that doesn't involved a delicately preserved matriarch in a box. But it never happens. No family reunions, no parties, no celebration.

So perhaps my infatution with other people's deaths stems from an inability to make death personal. No one I ever genuinely cared about ever died. Cancer took my "favorite" grandparent in June. She was a sweet woman, but she lived two states away, so I felt I hardly knew her. It's easy to have a favorite something when that something is shrouded in mystery.

Lucy came into my home mostly whenever I wanted her to. At that time, Nick at Nite played her show constantly. I knew she was a good woman. And funny. So hysterically funny. She had a standing invite to come visit me any time, but she was taken too soon. So, I investigate the deaths of people I hardly know. Wikipedia has become my friend. And the more tragic or bizarre the cause of death, the better. Actors who die young are especially entertaining.

I never try to overthink a death when I learn of it. I'm just curious as to why people died, their age, and what was going on in their lives just before they took their last breath. Maybe it makes me odd, but I don't mean any harm in it. I'm a curious creature, living on this strange planet, who is fascinated by life because my life hasn't been touched by a great mass of fascinating people.