Our family has just returned from an annual trip to Charleston, S.C., trips we have been making for 26 years. The tradition began when my brother moved to Charleston and invited us — our parents and siblings and their families — to celebrate Christmas and the completion of repairs on his historic house, which had been clobbered by Hurricane Hugo.
The first trip was a long haul down Interstate 95, a grand dinner at our brother's renovated house, and a long return trip back home. All of us were enchanted by Charleston, though many of its most magnificent homes, churches and vistas were screened by scaffolding as the years-long process of recovery from Hugo went forward. Despite the long road trips, all of us were eager to continue the new tradition, which evolved into an annual late-December weekend (not just one day) in charming Charleston with dinner at a private club.
The cast has changed. Our own children, who were 12, 15 and 19 that first time, now have children of their own, ages 8 to 12. Similarly, my siblings' children have grown up, married, divorced, and produced children of their own. The annual dinner now requires seating for 25 or more.
Charleston has its charms, but the primary attraction of this December weekend lies in the fact that we see some of these nieces and nephews and their children only in Charleston. During a Friday night conversation with a half dozen of our entourage, I had to remind myself that I was talking to my eldest niece and not to her mother, who died six years ago. The voice, expressions and laugh were all the same, and I felt both a longing to see my sister-in-law again and the comfort that her personality and spirit remains.
Our parents died in 2006 after a decade of decline. My sister-in-law died in 2011, and her husband died unexpectedly a year later. Then my younger sister died shortly after a cancer diagnosis in 2013. With each death, the Charleston weekend had been more difficult but also more important. We know how ephemeral our lives are and how uncertain next year might be.
Soon after returning from Charleston on Sunday, my wife happened across a digital photo album of pictures taken during our 2010 Charleston weekend. Seeing my brother, his wife and my sister enjoying the family again made me gasp. The photos of our grandchildren as toddlers and preschoolers evoked almost as much emotion. But I was so glad to see the pictures of so many smiling faces and conversations.
This is our family, and neither death nor distance can change that.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Sunday, June 25, 2017
A book about life from a dying woman
In the past month, I have recommended Nina Riggs' book, "The Bright Hour," to a dozen or more people. Each time, I told the story of this brilliantly talented woman, a close friend of my son and his wife, who had breast cancer and chronicled her bout with the "one small spot" that turned into a metastatic aggressor in her blog, an article in The New York Times' "Modern Love" section and, finally, in this book.
The topic is not one that most people care to read about. It's sad, and it strikes too close to home for most of us. But Nina achieves something with this book that transcends her personal experiences and the sadness of a young woman with two young boys facing her mortality before the age of 40. Her NYT article, "When a Couch is More Than a Couch," opened the door for the book. Literary agents and book publishers saw the finely tuned article about Nina's quest to buy the perfect couch — one that her husband and her sons could enjoy after she's gone — and wanted her to write an entire book.
In his review of the book, which was released this month, Drew Perry, a novelist and close friend of Nina, said he had a habit of turning down the corner of pages with especially good quotes or lovingly tuned sentences. With Nina's book, he said, he was turning down almost every page. Her prose is poetic and immensely insightful and quotable.
The book is full of quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, an ancestor of Nina's, and the French philosopher Montaigne. She relies on the wisdom of others to try to make sense of her own life, and she brings her own wisdom.
Nina pulls readers into her world of hope, despair, sickness from chemo and radiation, optimism and depression, how to tell young boys that their mother has terminal cancer, how a loving husband tries to sustain his wife through the worst of times. As Nina is fighting her own illness, her mother is dealing with another cancer, myeloma. A close friend with breast cancer carries on a profane and sarcastic comic dialog with Nina, whose mother doesn't live to see her daughter's book published or her grandsons grown up.
In this worst of times, Nina finds goodness and brightness and love and laughter. She finds that "When you fall in love with your kids, you fall in love forever," a realization taken from a song from her childhood, "When I Fall in Love." Seeing Benny riding his bicycle without assistance for the first time is a thing of sublime beauty, even as Nina's back has just broken because cancer has attacked her vertebrae.
From her time studying in Italy, she recalls "memento mori" — "Remember, you will die." Nina faces her own death and all that she will miss with her husband and her sons. She sees the beauty of the days we have for as long as we have them: "We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other."
Two bits of irony struck me about this book. The "About the Author" page says Nina "lived with her husband and sons and dogs in Greensboro." She died weeks before publication, requiring the startling past tense, a book about life about a woman who has died. The other irony comes from Nina's book of poetry, published in 2009. It's title: "Lucky, Lucky."
The topic is not one that most people care to read about. It's sad, and it strikes too close to home for most of us. But Nina achieves something with this book that transcends her personal experiences and the sadness of a young woman with two young boys facing her mortality before the age of 40. Her NYT article, "When a Couch is More Than a Couch," opened the door for the book. Literary agents and book publishers saw the finely tuned article about Nina's quest to buy the perfect couch — one that her husband and her sons could enjoy after she's gone — and wanted her to write an entire book.
In his review of the book, which was released this month, Drew Perry, a novelist and close friend of Nina, said he had a habit of turning down the corner of pages with especially good quotes or lovingly tuned sentences. With Nina's book, he said, he was turning down almost every page. Her prose is poetic and immensely insightful and quotable.
The book is full of quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, an ancestor of Nina's, and the French philosopher Montaigne. She relies on the wisdom of others to try to make sense of her own life, and she brings her own wisdom.
Nina pulls readers into her world of hope, despair, sickness from chemo and radiation, optimism and depression, how to tell young boys that their mother has terminal cancer, how a loving husband tries to sustain his wife through the worst of times. As Nina is fighting her own illness, her mother is dealing with another cancer, myeloma. A close friend with breast cancer carries on a profane and sarcastic comic dialog with Nina, whose mother doesn't live to see her daughter's book published or her grandsons grown up.
In this worst of times, Nina finds goodness and brightness and love and laughter. She finds that "When you fall in love with your kids, you fall in love forever," a realization taken from a song from her childhood, "When I Fall in Love." Seeing Benny riding his bicycle without assistance for the first time is a thing of sublime beauty, even as Nina's back has just broken because cancer has attacked her vertebrae.
From her time studying in Italy, she recalls "memento mori" — "Remember, you will die." Nina faces her own death and all that she will miss with her husband and her sons. She sees the beauty of the days we have for as long as we have them: "We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other."
Two bits of irony struck me about this book. The "About the Author" page says Nina "lived with her husband and sons and dogs in Greensboro." She died weeks before publication, requiring the startling past tense, a book about life about a woman who has died. The other irony comes from Nina's book of poetry, published in 2009. It's title: "Lucky, Lucky."
Monday, May 1, 2017
Funerals are celebrations of life
The older you get, the more funerals you attend. It's a fundamental rule of this life. As you age, your friends, relatives and acquaintances reach the age of mortality, and funerals follow. Your time will come.
I attended another funeral Sunday, and I found it unusually uplifting and spiritually nourishing. The music and the liturgy of funerals usually are not — and should not be — mournful and despairing. Christian theology speaks of conquering death, and gerontologists speak of death as a phase of life. So it is appropriate that funerals are often called "celebrations of life."
As I sat in the balcony among the capacity crowd in the large church sanctuary, my mind turned to the stirring music from the organ and the carefully chosen readings from Scripture, as well as the praise and humorous eulogies offered by the decedent's grandchildren. I left the church not depressed but uplifted, fulfilled in a way that my heart needed.
After attending funerals that were like yesterday's — uplifting and positive — and others that were sad, mournful, despairing and even accusatory, I began thinking of my own funeral. I have become keenly aware as I read the obituary columns that the majority of the obits are for people younger than I. I have made a list of Scripture to be read and of hymns to be sung, including "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and "For All the Saints." The hymns should be sung by the congregation, not by a soloist, I decreed, because a funeral, like other worship, is a corporate experience in which all should participate.
A well-done funeral is an uplifting spiritual experience, so it was only in partial sarcasm that I suggested years ago that someone start a new cable channel, The Funeral Channel, which would cover live and rerun funerals of celebrities, statesmen and others, funerals of people like Edward Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Prince, Robin Williams, and all the others, perhaps even well-planned, uplifting funerals from Wilson, N.C.
It would beat most of what's on cable TV.
I attended another funeral Sunday, and I found it unusually uplifting and spiritually nourishing. The music and the liturgy of funerals usually are not — and should not be — mournful and despairing. Christian theology speaks of conquering death, and gerontologists speak of death as a phase of life. So it is appropriate that funerals are often called "celebrations of life."
As I sat in the balcony among the capacity crowd in the large church sanctuary, my mind turned to the stirring music from the organ and the carefully chosen readings from Scripture, as well as the praise and humorous eulogies offered by the decedent's grandchildren. I left the church not depressed but uplifted, fulfilled in a way that my heart needed.
After attending funerals that were like yesterday's — uplifting and positive — and others that were sad, mournful, despairing and even accusatory, I began thinking of my own funeral. I have become keenly aware as I read the obituary columns that the majority of the obits are for people younger than I. I have made a list of Scripture to be read and of hymns to be sung, including "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and "For All the Saints." The hymns should be sung by the congregation, not by a soloist, I decreed, because a funeral, like other worship, is a corporate experience in which all should participate.
A well-done funeral is an uplifting spiritual experience, so it was only in partial sarcasm that I suggested years ago that someone start a new cable channel, The Funeral Channel, which would cover live and rerun funerals of celebrities, statesmen and others, funerals of people like Edward Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Prince, Robin Williams, and all the others, perhaps even well-planned, uplifting funerals from Wilson, N.C.
It would beat most of what's on cable TV.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Loss of memory through the death of others
People die. We grieve. We mourn. The ache lingers. We dissolve ourselves in the routines of life, and still the ache stabs us. Some little thought, a photograph, a song, a place, a flower, a car, a book, a smell, a taste, a sound, a flash of light through the trees plunges a rapier through our calm demeanor and our quotidian routine. We crumble into despair.
When we lose a friend or a family member, we lose pieces of ourselves. What died with them was a part of us, and that part is taken away. Our collective memory loses its fullness. Without others' memories to help keep alive our own, we lose whole parts of ourselves, for it is experience and memory that makes us what we are — social, sentient beings reliant on others to keep our memories straight.
The pain of aging is in losing, one by one, those who have been a part of your life for decades. First parents and aunts and uncles, then your own generation, cousins and siblings, and contemporaries, friends from childhood or later. Each of them carries away knowledge of you in the form of memories, some of them many decades old. With each death, we are a little less of what we had been. We are left an incomplete version of living, a flawed recollection that cannot be supplemented or ignited ever again.
If the elderly seem thinner, more fragile, or slower, it may be because they have seen too many memories buried, too many pieces of themselves cremated. They become an abridged version, a redacted life.
When we lose a friend or a family member, we lose pieces of ourselves. What died with them was a part of us, and that part is taken away. Our collective memory loses its fullness. Without others' memories to help keep alive our own, we lose whole parts of ourselves, for it is experience and memory that makes us what we are — social, sentient beings reliant on others to keep our memories straight.
The pain of aging is in losing, one by one, those who have been a part of your life for decades. First parents and aunts and uncles, then your own generation, cousins and siblings, and contemporaries, friends from childhood or later. Each of them carries away knowledge of you in the form of memories, some of them many decades old. With each death, we are a little less of what we had been. We are left an incomplete version of living, a flawed recollection that cannot be supplemented or ignited ever again.
If the elderly seem thinner, more fragile, or slower, it may be because they have seen too many memories buried, too many pieces of themselves cremated. They become an abridged version, a redacted life.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Death makes another visit
Parents never expect — and should never experience — the loss of a child. The same is true, to a lesser degree, of younger siblings.
Two long drives in four days took me to visit the sickbed of my younger sister who went from oblivious assumptions of good health to a cancer diagnosis to a hospice bed in a matter of days. The shock still reverberates through my gut and awakens me at night. Plans and expectations of visits and conversations are washed away in a flood of painful reality that my incredulous mind cannot grasp.
This is not a new reality for me. I was 13 when my older sister died in a traffic accident. My older brother died following emergency heart surgery just seven months ago. The refusal to accept reality gripped me in similar ways when death struck too close 50 years apart.
At an age when my greatest anticipations revolve around the time when my wife and I will retire and will have the time that the workday world does not allow us, I face the reality that my sister, whose dreams of free time and of cuddling grandchildren into adolescence and adulthood are the same as mine, will be denied that joy and achievement we so yearn for. Life is filled with hoped-for outcomes and anticipation of good times, but the cruelty of death is not limited to the young and vibrant. We who have achieved our greatest goals — seeing our children educated and married and holding grandchildren shaped by our own genes — but still hope for new joys and time to savor life's goodness can face the cruelty of hopes shattered and happiness barely tasted suddenly denied. Death at any age denies us the sublime pleasures of this life. It's arbitrary, unfair and unstoppable.
Two long drives in four days took me to visit the sickbed of my younger sister who went from oblivious assumptions of good health to a cancer diagnosis to a hospice bed in a matter of days. The shock still reverberates through my gut and awakens me at night. Plans and expectations of visits and conversations are washed away in a flood of painful reality that my incredulous mind cannot grasp.
This is not a new reality for me. I was 13 when my older sister died in a traffic accident. My older brother died following emergency heart surgery just seven months ago. The refusal to accept reality gripped me in similar ways when death struck too close 50 years apart.
At an age when my greatest anticipations revolve around the time when my wife and I will retire and will have the time that the workday world does not allow us, I face the reality that my sister, whose dreams of free time and of cuddling grandchildren into adolescence and adulthood are the same as mine, will be denied that joy and achievement we so yearn for. Life is filled with hoped-for outcomes and anticipation of good times, but the cruelty of death is not limited to the young and vibrant. We who have achieved our greatest goals — seeing our children educated and married and holding grandchildren shaped by our own genes — but still hope for new joys and time to savor life's goodness can face the cruelty of hopes shattered and happiness barely tasted suddenly denied. Death at any age denies us the sublime pleasures of this life. It's arbitrary, unfair and unstoppable.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The end of a relationship
A late-afternoon telephone call Wednesday ended a 49-year relationship. Karen was my first sister-in-law and the first new member of our family by marriage. Now she is the first of my generation to die of "natural causes," if you can consider cancer "natural."
Her terrible illness and the inevitability of its ending have stirred up memories long forgotten of the awkwardness of incorporating a new adult into the family and how she made the transition easy with her quiet tolerance and her quick laughter. I was 15 or so when she brought a newborn baby to our home and plopped my first niece into my lap one day with a laugh because I was the only family member who had not fought for a turn to hold the baby. I was 15 and too cool for that. When I married and had children of my own, she vividly enjoyed their presence and bonded with my wife, a decade younger than she. As her sister pointed out, Karen didn't like crowds of strangers but she reveled in gatherings of close family and friends, no matter how large. She never liked having her picture made, so we have few photos of her, just memories of her laughter and her softly worded advice.
The last weekend we had together, just five months ago, was before her diagnosis. It was obvious that she was not feeling well. Her laughter was not so quick and she was unusually reticent. I'll remember instead other weekends strung over 49 years of good times, good stories and good laughs. And the warmth of sibling love.
Her terrible illness and the inevitability of its ending have stirred up memories long forgotten of the awkwardness of incorporating a new adult into the family and how she made the transition easy with her quiet tolerance and her quick laughter. I was 15 or so when she brought a newborn baby to our home and plopped my first niece into my lap one day with a laugh because I was the only family member who had not fought for a turn to hold the baby. I was 15 and too cool for that. When I married and had children of my own, she vividly enjoyed their presence and bonded with my wife, a decade younger than she. As her sister pointed out, Karen didn't like crowds of strangers but she reveled in gatherings of close family and friends, no matter how large. She never liked having her picture made, so we have few photos of her, just memories of her laughter and her softly worded advice.
The last weekend we had together, just five months ago, was before her diagnosis. It was obvious that she was not feeling well. Her laughter was not so quick and she was unusually reticent. I'll remember instead other weekends strung over 49 years of good times, good stories and good laughs. And the warmth of sibling love.
Friday, May 14, 2010
We all feel the death of a child
We were among scores, maybe hundreds, even thousands, who shed tears for a child we had never met, had never even heard of just days before. Such is the impact of the loss of a child.
We learned from our son of the illness of a classmate's young daughter. She was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis, and the prognosis was dire. By the time we heard of it, she was already in what he called "miracle territory." That's what doctors said it would take for her to survive. Despite fervent prayers from friends, relatives and strangers, the little patient did not survive. We received the heart-wrenching news this morning.
Before that curtain fell, we had read a forwarded e-mail from the mother, filled with gratitude for all the prayers, concerns and best wishes for "our precious girl." I read it, utterly astounded that this young mother could put together those words so eloquently, despite the burden on her heart.
Every parent's greatest fear is the death of a child. Fortunately, few parents have to endure such a tragedy. When this happens, all parents feel the horror and the gratitude of that dagger to the heart that barely misses. There but for the grace of God ...
The "sweet girl" whose parents now face a "world forever changed" was just weeks older than our son's younger child, who had himself faced a frightening bout with pneumonia when only a month old that left him hospitalized for a week. Modern medicine allowed him to come home and grow into a healthy toddler. This new tragedy slaps us with the reality of how close we had come to a similar fate. Nearly 30 years ago, a colleague's firstborn son was hospitalized with meningitis, and the young parents stared blankly at the shattering of their hopes and dreams. That baby survived and has grown to adulthood, but fate could have twisted another way.
Years ago, my brother and I sought out and found an old family cemetery, which had been untended for decades and was overgrown with trees and weeds. Walking among the stones, looking for names we knew from family histories, I happened upon a small grave marked by a stone larger than the grave space. On the top of the moss-laden stone were carved two words: "OUR BABY." At a time, in the early 1900s, when couples produced broods of eight, 10, 12 children, this ancestor of mine grieved for the one who was lost. Having a half-dozen other children to love could not fill the vacuum left by the one who died far too early. Even in a house filled with children, the loss of one imposes a world "forever changed."
The death of a child is so powerful, you don't even have to know the child or the parents to be knocked askew.
We learned from our son of the illness of a classmate's young daughter. She was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis, and the prognosis was dire. By the time we heard of it, she was already in what he called "miracle territory." That's what doctors said it would take for her to survive. Despite fervent prayers from friends, relatives and strangers, the little patient did not survive. We received the heart-wrenching news this morning.
Before that curtain fell, we had read a forwarded e-mail from the mother, filled with gratitude for all the prayers, concerns and best wishes for "our precious girl." I read it, utterly astounded that this young mother could put together those words so eloquently, despite the burden on her heart.
Every parent's greatest fear is the death of a child. Fortunately, few parents have to endure such a tragedy. When this happens, all parents feel the horror and the gratitude of that dagger to the heart that barely misses. There but for the grace of God ...
The "sweet girl" whose parents now face a "world forever changed" was just weeks older than our son's younger child, who had himself faced a frightening bout with pneumonia when only a month old that left him hospitalized for a week. Modern medicine allowed him to come home and grow into a healthy toddler. This new tragedy slaps us with the reality of how close we had come to a similar fate. Nearly 30 years ago, a colleague's firstborn son was hospitalized with meningitis, and the young parents stared blankly at the shattering of their hopes and dreams. That baby survived and has grown to adulthood, but fate could have twisted another way.
Years ago, my brother and I sought out and found an old family cemetery, which had been untended for decades and was overgrown with trees and weeds. Walking among the stones, looking for names we knew from family histories, I happened upon a small grave marked by a stone larger than the grave space. On the top of the moss-laden stone were carved two words: "OUR BABY." At a time, in the early 1900s, when couples produced broods of eight, 10, 12 children, this ancestor of mine grieved for the one who was lost. Having a half-dozen other children to love could not fill the vacuum left by the one who died far too early. Even in a house filled with children, the loss of one imposes a world "forever changed."
The death of a child is so powerful, you don't even have to know the child or the parents to be knocked askew.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
'To dust you shall return'
"You are dust, and to dust you shall return."
The Ash Wednesday liturgy takes on a greater poignancy at times when we are faced with the limitations of life. I've attended more than my usual share of funerals in the past month, and although some were called "celebrations of life," their sadness was not diminished by a more upbeat name. Tonight I wear crossed black smears on my forehead as unnecessary reminders of the limits mankind has known since the days of Adam and has recognized philosophically at least since the writing of the Torah some 3,000 or so years ago. Each funeral, each painful passing, each empty chair reminds us that our lives are as fleeting as the windblown dust and as commonplace as the dust itself.
We delude ourselves by thinking that we are important, that we are more than the dust of the earth or that our importance will last. Ash Wednesday reminds us that our greatest achievements, our grandest schemes and adventures are nothing more than cosmic dust in a universe more vast than our minds can comprehend.
The 40 days of Lent begin, like the first day of boot camp or football practice, by tearing down the ego so that it can be rebuilt. The Lenten season — so called from the lengthening of the days at this time of year — ends with the triumph of Easter. The Resurrection gives hope where there was none, glimmers of precious gems among the dust. When the windblown dust has settled, its force, its sting, its beauty and its love will live on in collective memories.
You are dust, but the dust will not be soon forgotten.
The Ash Wednesday liturgy takes on a greater poignancy at times when we are faced with the limitations of life. I've attended more than my usual share of funerals in the past month, and although some were called "celebrations of life," their sadness was not diminished by a more upbeat name. Tonight I wear crossed black smears on my forehead as unnecessary reminders of the limits mankind has known since the days of Adam and has recognized philosophically at least since the writing of the Torah some 3,000 or so years ago. Each funeral, each painful passing, each empty chair reminds us that our lives are as fleeting as the windblown dust and as commonplace as the dust itself.
We delude ourselves by thinking that we are important, that we are more than the dust of the earth or that our importance will last. Ash Wednesday reminds us that our greatest achievements, our grandest schemes and adventures are nothing more than cosmic dust in a universe more vast than our minds can comprehend.
The 40 days of Lent begin, like the first day of boot camp or football practice, by tearing down the ego so that it can be rebuilt. The Lenten season — so called from the lengthening of the days at this time of year — ends with the triumph of Easter. The Resurrection gives hope where there was none, glimmers of precious gems among the dust. When the windblown dust has settled, its force, its sting, its beauty and its love will live on in collective memories.
You are dust, but the dust will not be soon forgotten.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sad, sad life, and two sad deaths
Sad. That's the word to describe not just the death of Michael Jackson Thursday afternoon but also the life that preceded it. He was one of the great musical talents of his era, but his bizarre lifestyle and self-indulgent, self-destructive habits tarnished his amazing musical accomplishments. I'll admit, I was not a huge Michael Jackson fan, but after I gave my oldest daughter his 1982 "Thriller" album (an LP, which we must still have somewhere), I listened to the music and was entranced. The album was a creative tour de force. The public had come to know Jackson from his sappy, predictable (but very popular) Jackson Five tunes, such as "I Want You Back." Michael, 10 or 12 years old, was cute as could be, but the songs were fixed in the same old groove. "Thriller" was different, a creative wonder that deserved its accolades and phenomenal sales. It was as monumental as "Sgt. Pepper's" or "Born in the USA." Michael followed the album with a dance video that has been credited with (or blamed for) creating MTV.
But then there was his personal life. Married to Elvis' daughter and then to a nurse he met, he also had a fascination with young boys, which led to both a civil lawsuit settlement and to criminal molestation charges (he was acquitted). His Neverland ranch was a child's playground owned by a multimillionaire man. Those were just weird affectations, but his plastic surgeries and his skin lightening were as bizarre as his denials that he had done anything to make himself look more Caucasian. I can't bear to look at recent photos of Jackson and compare them to the earlier photos of the cute, normal-looking teenager of his earlier life without wondering what could have driven his self-destructive alterations. His nose, his chin, his eyebrows and his skin are all altered, turning himself into a Frankensteinian mutation with the skin tone of powdered sugar. Because Jackson denied surgically or medically changing his appearance, we'll probably never know why he did it.
The other celeb
rity death Thursday was Farrah Fawcett, whose fabulous face, body and hair made her an icon of the 1970s. Her "big hair" can be seen in styles lasting through the 1980s, but nobody ever matched her flowing tresses. Fawcett became a star in an insipid television series that had more to do with the looks of the stars — Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith — than with the plots, which were all predictable and cliched. "Charlie's Angels" created the "T&A" genre of television shows, which had a long run. Fawcett left the show after one year, at the peak of her popularity, but never achieved the level of celebrity and admiration that the show had given her. She won some praise as an actress, particularly for "The Burning Bed," but she never was a consistent star.
But, oh, her pictures! The iconic, best-selling poster of her in that clingy red swimsuit with that brilliant smile a
nd all that thick, bouncy hair will forever represent the feminine ideal, circa 1977. She was a beautiful woman who had the courage to pose for Playboy at age 48, proving that older women could still be beautiful and sexy. Later she pulled back the veil of privacy to document her fatal struggle with cancer, showing the disease in all its cruelty.
Goodbye, Farrah. Goodbye, Michael. It's a sad day.
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