Sharing Saturday
Labor Day really makes me take stock of where the summer went. Those well-intentioned projects that I never even got started. But I think that as I reflect on the summer of 2009, what will forever stand out in my memory is the amount of death that surrounded me.
Fortunately, I was not alone. I was in the good company of millions of other Americans who had lost icons and iconic figures. Ed McMahon (I'll miss hoping to see him at my doorstep with a huge check in hand); Farrah Fawcett (her face seemed to launch a thousand ships); Walter Cronkite (the voice of a nation); Senator Ted Kennedy (the last of Camelot) and of course the most famous of all, Michael Jackson. These five celebrities stand out in terms of their notoriety, but this summer, we lost many others as well.
What makes me continue to think about this is how strangers were able to reach out to one another and assist with the mourning process. As well as how, despite not having a personal connection with any of these people, so many felt the profound and real sadness of losing someone.
Anyone's death makes us confront our own mortality and the other losses that we've experienced: neither of which are comfortable thoughts. How do we make meaning from tragedy? Especially when mourning from afar is not an action that everyone can understand.
- Get perspective (Take stock of where you are in your life)
- Make realistic goals (What can be changed now to make it better?)
- Allow yourself to grieve
- Create something tangible from the loss (For example: a montage of pictures or a play list of songs)
- Celebrate what you learned from that person
But this aside, what can we learn from our losses? Even celebrities die—those that we so easily put on a pedestal can not only fall off in mortal ways such as a tarnished image, but also with the scariest thing of all: death. Just like the adage says: The only certainties in life are death and taxes.
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