Many celeberties have come and gone in my 18 years of exsistance. Most of the time I didn’t know who they were or even pay attention when they died. Death isn’t usually on the minds of kids.
However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that as I join the social networking sites, its almost unavoidable to find out when celeberties die. However, it still wasn’t until a few years ago that I actually began to mourn the loss of a celeb. Steve Irwan’s death was the first celeb death that I mourned. As a kid, I LOVED watching Animal Planet, and Steve Irwan had an awesome show and of course his accent and lingo were amusing. When he died, it was so sudden, and unexpected. It was heartbreaking and it took me a while to finally get it through my head that he was no longer here. Even to this day I sometimes forget that hes dead, that hes still alive on Earth somewhere. Hes not. Its sad to think about it.
I had not really mourned the loss of any other celeberty until now with Michael Jackson’s sudden death. The celeberties that had died from the time Steve died until now had all been older celebs that had reached their true star power long before I was even born. Its hard to mourn for those who you have no connection to. But now, with Michael’s sudden death, I’ve returned to those same feelings that I felt when Steve Irwan died. Michael Jackson, like Irwan, had died so suddenly and unexpectedly. You always imagined him growing older and dying from something dealing with old age, but something like this just takes your breath away. Jackson also had tied memories to my childhood like Irwan did. My mother always listened to his ABC song in the car, and I always thought it was a girl singing. He was in the news and on magazine covers with the pale skin, pointed nose, and skinny face. He was often the focus of satire and of jokes throughout my secondary education. I remember I once told people that Andrew Jackson bleached his skin, when I meant Michael Jackson. I didn’t know either of them so I guess its easy to see how I made that mistake. I was never a true fan of Jackson’s, but I did have Thriller and Billie Jean on my Ipod before he died. I was never a fan, yet I miss him so much that I feel incomplete and heartbroken. Its so weird for me to care so much about someone who I barely cared about before, someone who I had made fun of before. I really wish that I could’ve watched him transform into an old man. What would he have looked like??
Steve Irwan and Michael Jackson’s deaths have been the only 2 celeb deaths that I have mourned so far. I’ve been told that as you get older, the more friends, family, and people you know begin to die out in greater number. I just hope that there are no more deaths in Hollywood for a long time. I’m still mourning about Michael.
-M.M.
