If you had asked me yesterday how I would feel if Michael Jackson suddenly died, I'd have said, I wouldn't feel anything. He is nothing to me. I don't really care. If you had asked me yesterday if I would blog about it, I would have said, "Certainly NOT!" Pop culture doesn't really interest me all that much, nor do celebrities. If you had asked me yesterday if I would ever blog about Michael Jackson, I would have said, "No. Never, not in a million years."
But today, I find I do care and I am blogging. Why? I don't know. My husband told me in sort of an offhand manner, "Oh, the big news today is that Michael Jackson died." I said, "WHAT???" And I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. It's like I'm in shock. And I can't figure that out. If you asked me to name one of his songs, I couldn't do it. As far as I know, I've never even heard one. And I generally never had any respect for him: a black man who looked like a white woman. I just never really thought that was cool. And I really didn't approve of his lifestyle.
And yet, I can't believe he's dead. Just like that. It seems so sudden. I wasn't prepared for this. I didn't know I needed to be prepared for this.
Is it the fact that his celebrity status is so huge that even people who didn't care at all about him or flat-out didn't like him are still affected by his death? Is it the suddenness of it? The reminder that any one of us, no matter how young or how old, no matter how sinful or how righteous, can be called out into eternity at any time? Is it the tragedy of his life? Not his death. That didn't have to be tragic. No, I mean the tragedy of a life lived for nothing real, nothing lasting, nothing eternal. Is that it?
Maybe it was a combination of all those things. But this I know: Michael Jackson's death is tragic because his life was tragic. And somehow, it affects me.
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