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A mother lost her son last Thursday
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Photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com
Los Angeles certainly must have the greatest density of celebrities living within its boundaries than any other city in the world. Drive east on Sunset in Beverly Hills and you can even pick up your very own, very unreliable, Map of the Stars’ Homes and see for yourself. So it should follow that, where the famous live, they also die.
This was true last Thursday when Michael Jackson, at UCLA, and Farrah Fawcett, at St. John’s Santa Monica, both passed away. The world was shocked by one death, merely saddened by the other. Twitter crashed with the news. Both made front-page headlines the following day. Outside Jackson’s family compound in Encino, crowds gather daily. Flowers, candles and mourners surround Fawcett’s and Jackson’s stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
Did you know that another individual died at UCLA on June 25? That approximately 165 people die every day in Los Angeles? Some are elderly. Their deaths were expected. Regardless, they were likely someone’s mother or father, beloved uncle or grandmother. And others still were young – a mother’s son, a sister, a loving husband, an adored niece. These relatives and friends woke up on Friday morning and had to accept a world still rotating on its axis without their loved one on board for the ride. While neighbors and co-workers discussed what may have happened to Michael Jackson and shared theories and opinions of his life and death, they were left to grieve quietly, and perhaps gently compete for focus on their loss, on their reality.
Human nature compels us to seek each other’s company when tragedy strikes. Even if we’re not personally affected, we reach out to connect because we have to. It makes us feel better, less alone. So fans rushed to UCLA upon hearing of Jackson’s death to be with others moved in the same way. News vans crammed the streets of Westwood, and the doors outside the hospital. But imagine being the family of the other person who died there that day. Even Farrah Fawcett had to relinquish the spotlight on June 25th. Try and envision what it must’ve been like to lose a loved one to cancer, let’s say, or a car accident, on September 11, 2001. Is timing really everything, even in death?
Katherine Jackson lost her son last Thursday. We mourn for her, with her. Other mothers lost their sons that day, too. And if it’s true that it takes a village to raise a child, then maybe it takes a village to grieve for one, also, even if we didn’t know them, even if they weren’t famous.
Just a thought.
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