A Peculiar Mourning

[matril]

Those who know I'm an avid Star Wars fan (and who doesn't know that?) might be inclined to ask me two questions lately: have I seen Rogue One yet, and isn't it sad about Carrie Fisher? The answer to the first is not yet, I'm not super-hyped about it but I'll get around to it eventually, primarily so I can see Mon Mothma and Bail Organa as played by the actors from the prequels. As for Carrie...well, I have thoughts, but let's get to them in a roundabout way.

A few weeks before Christmas, I got a letter from the hospital. We're always getting some sort of mail reminding us to get checkups or asking us to fill out a medical survey or other such things, so I opened it with little concern. The opening line of the letter informed me that my Ob/Gyn had recently died.

I sat there with a peculiar stunned feeling washing over me as I read the remainder, which told me how to obtain my medical records to transfer them to a new doctor. There was something so surreal about the whole business. I hadn't known the man in any capacity outside of this one specific setting, and yet I had known him for twelve years. He delivered two of my children. He wasn't young, probably in his sixties. I assumed one day he would retire and I'd have to find someone else. This, however, I had somehow never anticipated.

I had chosen him almost at random from the phone book, back when we first moved to Massachusetts and I found out I was pregnant with Emma. I was looking for someone nearby, preferably in the office building in walking distance from our apartment. I tried a few names, all the female doctors first, but they either didn't accept my insurance or weren't taking new patients. His practice was the first one willing to take me, so that was that. Then I found out they had moved from the convenient, walkable office to one in the next town over, but oh well. Setting up that first appointment was hard enough on my social anxieties. As long as I was reasonably satisfied with this doctor, I wasn't about to go through the process of doctor-searching all over again.

And that's basically why I kept the same doctor for twelve years. I don't change anything unless it's absolutely necessary. He did a fine job delivering my babies, and he was competent and friendly and respectful, which is important when it comes to something as inherently awkward as gynecological exams. I liked his staff as well. His nurse always made sure I was comfortable and well-informed.

He seemed like a nice man overall. But that's it. That's all I know. I didn't know him as a person. I didn't know anything about his family. I have no idea how he died, and my Google searches haven't found any obituary. There's such a surreal quality to all of it, that I should feel sadness or a sense of loss for someone I didn't really know. It's not an overwhelming feeling. He was only a peripheral part of my life. Most of the time it's not in my thoughts at all, and then I'll remember again and think of my last appointment in April and how I had no idea it was last time I would go there. It's just...strange.

All of this was on my mind when Carrie Fisher died. Much more than with my doctor, I had no true connection to her at all. I didn't know her except for her celebrity persona and the roles she played, and she certainly didn't know me. But her death brought an undeniable sadness. It's not ever-present; it comes and goes without affecting much of the practical concerns of life. It's just...strange.

It's sad when anyone dies, particularly of something other than old age. It's sad when a beloved famous person dies because we feel like we knew them. It's sad about Carrie specifically because, even for the majority who never knew her personally, her public face was so compelling, so unique and funny and resilient and memorable. And yet a part of me feels like my sadness is delusional. I didn't know her. I'm just one of those nutty Star Wars fans. She portrayed one my favorite characters, but she's not really Princess Leia. And if she were some non-famous person I met in real life, would we have become friends? Unlikely. In a sense I feel that I'm mourning more of an idea than a person.

Certainly any thoughts of her recent appearance as Leia make me depressed. Going from a princess to a general is a demotion, for heaven's sake! A princess hires a general and tells him what to do. After all her groundbreaking work to remake our concept of princesses, why do we still seem to think that their role is to wear frilly dresses and look pretty, while only military commanders are of any true strength? I blame Disney. :P But more than that, I look at how Princess Leia made things happen, while General Leia mostly has things happen to her -- and pretty crummy stuff, too. Her husband leaves her, her brother abandons her, her son betrays everything she fought for, and she can only stand there, looking sad. You can protest that she leads the entire Resistance, but that's implied, not explicitly explored. All reactive, nothing proactive. It breaks my heart, and not in a cathartic, well-told story kind of way. I know they could only do so much with her role in order to accommodate Carrie's health concerns, but Leia earned her happy ending in Episode VI; she fought for it tooth and nail. I find no joy in the fact that they revived her character only to throw a giant bag of garbage on her.

But those are my issues. I know Carrie was happy to take up the role again, and she was able to use her increased spotlight to generate more awareness of her personal causes like mental illness. In the end it was only a public face, but there was so much openness and unapologetic audacity in her demeanor that it felt personal.

Plenty of people died last year. Some of them were famous; most of them were not. I'm sure all of them were mourned by at least one person. And their lives were no less meaningful just because their deaths went unnoticed by the world at large. I'm grateful for the legacy Carrie left behind and sad she didn't have more time to do more. I also recognize that everyone leaves a legacy. Some are quieter than others. They're all important.

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to reply because I'd been going through some of this myself.

On the one hand, I think we're made to feel guilty or "wrong" to feel genuine sadness at the death of a famous person. Who feels the loss of a stranger? That's weird! There's something wrong with you! But one lady commenting on FB of all places had a great succinct answer. It's because we bring these people into our lives and what they did mattered so much to us. I'm not a celebrity worshiper in the least. But there have been "celebrity" deaths that bothered me, others that have really bothered me, and a small few like this that genuinely hurt. It's not exactly like losing a close friend or family member. I mean, I still had to put on a happy face for visiting relatives. I could rationally talk about what happened without losing it. But boy oh boy do I wish it hadn't happened. At times it would me really sad. She was too young, she seemed like she had more to do/more to say, and that her mother died a day later compounded the tragedy.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. What Carrie did really mattered to us, and we can mourn the loss of that even if we were strangers to her personally. And oh, hearing about her mother the next day was just brutal. She must have gone through such an ordeal during those days that Carrie was in the hospital. No one wants to outlive their children.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

No, no one does. In fact the first thing I said to my mom after she told me Carrie had died was, "This is going to kill Debbie Reynolds. They were so close." I knew Reynolds had been in poor health anyway. And sure enough...