Celebrity Deaths
In March of last year, I wrote a post titled Death Comes In Threes? about celebrities who had recently died and our macabre habit of grouping them into threes. Sadly, that post has seen more traffic today than it has in quite some time according to my stats page.
We are still trying to group these celebrity deaths in threes and it still doesn’t quite work. It is true that in the past week or so, actors Brad Renfro, Susanne Pleshette and Heath Ledger have passed…
… but poor Bobby Fischer tends to get overlooked.
The point of my post last year was that, yes, deaths do come in threes… and fours… and fives and so on… In fact, dozens of well known people have died in the past week.
Why do we try to put them into tidy little groups? Death is rarely tidy. Why can we not just remember their accomplishments, mourn their passing and pray for family, friends and fans?
I feel so bad for the families. Grieving a sudden death is hard enough, but having to do it in the public eye has to be awful
I was especially shocked at heath Ledger’s death. So young and so much promise, as well as so many accomplishements showing his range and depth of choice. I choose to believe his death was accidental, even though some have said suicide… So sad.
Yes, death is rarely tidy!
And, you are exactly right, Art!
What we should do is remember their accomliishmets, pray for their families and friends that miss surely miss them!
May all the souls of those that recently died rest in peace!
Good post, Art!
Margie
There’s a lot we don’t know about the personal lives of celebrities, When one of them dies, it’s sad to think it’s just another story for the media.
bobby fischer was such a good chess player! he shouldn’t have quit like that.
i have a book by him!!
bobby fischer (as far as i know) is far more famous than those three (or the first two, who, honestly, i’ve never heard of).
bobby fischer was also a raging anti-semite who gloated after 9/11.
I did a post once about this too … Do bad things come in threes ….IDK … doesnt it depend on when you start counting?
Happy Wed.
I was shocked at Heath Ledger’s death…you kind of expect to hear about Britney or Paris…but not him.
It’s all sad…
I read about Fischer this week. what a truelt amazing player and what a strange life. I replayed one of his games. Say what you like about him, he is a chess great.
I feel really sad for the latest… he was so young… All deaths are a tragedy.
A good friend of mine once told me that. When a second person dies, she always said, “There’s a next one waiting…” Even when negative things happen in our lives, they say it comes in threes. There has to be something with that number. I gotta google it. lol.
Susanne Pleshette will be the one I miss. Every Monday night one of the higher numbered channels shows some of the old MTM comedies from the ’70’s, including the Bob Newhart Show. My weekly reminder of what a good actress (and what good casts, in general) she was and what good writing they had. I was saddened that her husband, Tom Poston (the handyman in the later Newhart series) passed away a year or two ago. Now her. At least she had a real body of work to leave behind.
Life is so unexpected so let’s all treasure what we have in life.
No tidiness in death. We have experienced it in our community lately with kids. Three different schools in our community, including my kids’ elementary school, have had deaths. It is shocking when you see children dying. I think with celebs, we feel that they live so differently from us, a charmed life if you will, that their deaths shock us. – Jennifer
I came here from Jennifer’s blog, and had no idea that Brad Renfro had passed. I did read about all the others. What a sad time when we lose the young for such horrible reasons. I have been praying for their families, as it really is the only good we can do.
I’m with you, Art. The media is a two-edged sword, she gives and she takes away – dignity, a semblance of context or reality, meaning. I feel as though the media vultures who teach us to make peoples’ lives water cooler fodder is part of the problem. It’s hard to figure out, in that setting, how to make sense of this and appropriately express grief for the loss of their life, and the fact that (in the case of Ledger at least) we’ll miss out on the better half of a great film career.