The announcement of Farrah Fawcett's death today has me oddly shaken and sad, and I have come to realize that my feelings aren't just based on the untimely passing of a famous person. Thinking about Farrah conjures also long-forgotten memories of childhood. Farrah was a pop-culture icon when I was growing up. Someone whose smiling photos could be seen everywhere- in toothpaste commercials and even on the box that my mother's hair dryer came in. I am startled to realize how well I remember that box and how, as a little girl, I wanted to look like Farrah. She seemed to me to be all of the things a woman should be- pretty, strong, athletic, nice. I didn't get to see very many episodes of "Charlie's Angels"- I guess I was too young. But I remember that poster. Even ten years after it was made, boys were still hanging it in their rooms. Farrah could have been dismissed as a mere pretty face with great teeth and hair, but when I was in high school, she starred in "The Burning Bed" and I saw that she was also a good actress.
I don't claim to know anything about her, other than her public image but her struggle with cancer reminds me how finite life is. Here was this endlessly fit, attractive, vibrant woman who had everything going for her and yet none of her healthy lifestyle prevented the cancer from taking over. It isn't fair, of course. I keep thinking life will become so one day, but it never does. It never makes any sense and I often ponder why we accept that life is this way. Charles Manson is still in jail- alive as ever. Why? Why do we never hear of serial killers or rapists enduring a painful cancer? Why must it always be someone who still has love and life left in them? Why did God make us crave stability and assurances in life when there are none?
Farrah Fawcett was one of many, many examples of womanhood for me in my early childhood. I admired a number of women whom I knew, read about and saw and I aspired, in some small way, to be like each of them. With Farrah's death, comes a death of a certain innocence, then, a certain hope. It makes no sense. It leaves no answers. And- the really big revelation- it happens to everyone. In life, as in death, a person ultimately only ever has oneself.
I am sad that Farrah did not win her fight. I am sad for her family and friends. I don't know what her death means for anyone, aside from the obvious loss of her presence. Perhaps it serves as a reminder that we can all be taken just as quickly as we arrive. That nothing we do in life, no matter how noble or stupid or heroic or average, means anything when it comes time to die. People fear life only because they fear death- if they had any assurance at all that life could go on as they know it indefinitely, then the risk of risk would disappear. It would be interesting to know what people would do if there was nothing to fear. Apparently, Farrah feared death but she chose to fight it. Was that brave of her? Does it matter now? We do these things because we want to live, we need to have hope. At 9:30 a.m. today, as most of us woke up, or sat at work or soothed a crying baby, Farrah was one of thousands of people who died. We acknowledge that this happens but we ignore it, too. Because it's a fact that someday, at 9:30 a.m. or 10:07 p.m. or midnight, we will cease to exist, too. And most of us are not looking forward to it, because we are afraid of the unknown. We are afraid of the pain of existence less than we are afraid of not existing at all.
There can be no end to this thought process until the end. Farrah, like others who have died or are dying this very minute, is on the other side now, and she either knows something that we don't or she has simply ceased to exist. Either way, we can't know that place until it is our turn. And the best we can hope for, when that day comes, is that someone will remember us in a positive way and perhaps keep us alive in memory, for a little while longer.
I wish I still had that hair dryer box.
