The Loss of an Icon

I wasn't born when Lennon was shot, but my older sister remembers.  She says my mother sobbed when she heard the news, mourning his loss as if he was a friend or brother.   I always found it odd that she could be so affected by the death of a man she had never met, a man that was oblivious to her existence entirely.

And then I read the news this morning.  David Bowie is dead.  The Goblin King is gone.  As I scrolled through my Facebook feed, reading tributes to a lost icon, I wept.  I played his music in the car as I ran errands, and I wept.

With his death, a small part of me has also been lost.

He was my first celebrity crush, with his tight gray pants and drag queen makeup.  I worshipped him. I tried to be swept away to his goblin kingdom, but the words didn't work for me.  The magic only belonged to Sarah.

  I memorized the Labyrinth soundtrack, quoted the lines every time I watched the film.  I tried to imitate his eye makeup, always falling miserably short of the mark.  In my prepubescent confusion, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be him, or marry him.

The part of me that dreamed I could grow up to be him is gone forever.  That piece of me, the one that held onto the hope that we would meet one day, and instantly become best friends, has withered away.  It left an emptiness I hadn't realized was possible.

So, I get it. Like my mother, I find myself sobbing in my kitchen, not just because the world lost a great man, but because I miss the part of me that went with him.

R.I.P. Mr. Bowie 

8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016