No Man Is An Island

... Any man's death diminishes me.

John Donne's words came back to me just now when I read about Natasha Richardson's sudden and tragic death. I knew of her mostly as Sally Bowles from the Cabaret cast recording soundtrack I've worn out, as one of the Redgraves, as Liam Neeson's wife. I can't honestly say I ever followed her, or made a concerted effort to view her work. But there's something in me that hurts to hear of her death, like it hurt when Heath Ledger died last year. I knew a lot of people who had similar reactions to that -- we were all sad, to the point of reflecting on it long past the normal celebrity-news attention span we have developed. And we were all embarrassed to be sad about someone we'd never met. Even people like my mother, whose celebrity knowledge is usually vague at best, confessed months later that she was still thinking about him.

I remember trying to pinpoint the reason for this unusually keen grief over someone I'd hardly ever thought about during his life. Am I really just that obsessed with Hollywood? I do spend a lot of time reading, talking, thinking about, and watching celebrity culture. I do feel, on some level, that I *know* these people, though of course at the same time I realize I don't.

Or was there a sense of identification somewhere in there - because after seeing him on film as a high schooler when I was, myself, in high school I felt a bit like we'd grown up together? Or maybe it was because his overdose, rather than from some typical heroin-and-coke-fueled celebrity orgy at the Chateau Marmont, seemed to stem from a completely understandable mix of depression, exhaustion, confusion, and just plain bad luck. Everyone I know has suffered from at least some of Heath's problems, and several of them (probably more than I'm aware of) have narrowly avoided sharing his fate. And a few *have* shared it.

Or maybe it comes down to fear. It's not enough that there are car accidents and homicides and heart disease and cancer and strokes; there are also accidental prescription drug overdoses. And fatal head injuries caused by minor falls. Probability for these kinds of events may be low, but as is demonstrated by the widespread phobia of flying (in which I unfortunately share), statistics mean nothing in the face of fear. Death can be so random. We try to work out, eat right, visit the doctor for physicals, avoid unnecessary risk; but we're unprepared to deal with these bizarre events. And if someone larger than life, with plenty of money and all of the security and care that can buy, can be snuffed out just like that? So can we. So can I. No one is safe.

So I guess it makes sense to be sad, even if it's about someone I've never met. It's not rational, but that's kind of what makes it human. We all share the same fears, and we all run the risk of our lives ending any day, from any random bit of bad luck. We're all connected in that way.

Every person's death does diminish us all.