I read the news today oh boyAbout a lucky man who made the grade
When I was younger I was raised on a steady diet of rock and pop music. The Beatles, The Stones and Bowie were a regular sound track. An early and important experience of the significance of death for me was my father talking about the death of John Lennon. He spoke about it with the same hollow awe that I have heard people use in talking about JFK or Princess Di. These events and other deaths like them were for many moments of cultural punctuation. Events that changed people’s lives and their worlds.
Death and dying is all around us. Yet, we can be distanced from these realities due to the anxiety that death provokes and our society’s approach to dealing with it. Our relationship with the deaths of those closest to us can be limited by their being hidden away as a clinical activity within our hospitals and aged care facilities. By contrast the deaths of public figures have never been more visible and scrutinised. Social Media and the constant news cycle mean that we are always in the loop. Our uneasy fascination is privileged with contact and information.
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