Bad Things Always Come in Threes
by pam ashlund
A car crash, a plane crash and a skiing accident. In the past few months, the world has lost Princess Diana, John Denver, and Sony Bono. Princess, Singer, Actor/Congressman. It is always difficult to understand tragedy. The mind resists, denies. It can not be, but it is. Suddenly mourning and television are inextricably linked (is a link ever not inextricable?). Television, the home of comedy and sports events, but also news. And the news isn't always good. No news is good news? Not to a news caster. Bad news is good news to an anchorman. So it has been a good news year.
These three deaths have created a kind of Trinity of sorrow. They remind us that you can not come to expect grace, performance and humor from the world. It may be taken from you at any moment. The usual lessons of death I suppose. Appreciate them while they are with us. Don't forget. Learn from their lives. As we increasingly do in an electronic age. Land on your feet, as did Diana and Sony. While we may anxiously anticipate failure, there is a powerful combination of relief and joy when that failure is averted.
And why do we forget, the moment that a star is not on top until they plunge from the sky in an experimental plane to an untimely death? That is one of the lessons of the death of John Denver. A lesson we can never really learn well enough, as the recent death of gold medalist Rodney Milburn illustrates. Milburn, homeless and destitute, dead at 47, 26 years after winning the Gold at the 1972 Olympics. Gold Record, Gold Medal, not enough for us to cherish and hold dear for longer than the synapses fire in our short term memory.
And how much of this is because of the news? Or because of our nature? Did we mourn these losses out of a sense of awe for the spectacular drama, and morbid curiosity? Or were we moved as we would be, by the loss of a loved one?
I know that I am among the many who live life vicariously through the personal lives of the famous--Gods and Goddesses in the Pantheon of television. But these deaths are a reminder that it is but a distant and temporary connection. These are but human beings that I never knew and never will. But we have all known them through the media, from their humble beginnings to their untimely demise. Bad things come in threes, the old folk saying goes. I hope so.
01/11/98
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