people I ought to have been able to mourn

Sylvia Plath was the same age as Betty White, who died at the age of 99 after great fanfare and around the release of a documentary celebrating her. Plath died at 30, alone, just as her career was beginning to take off. It’s impossible to know what might have been, but to see the passing of somebody the same age as her whose career I had been able to enjoy in my own lifetime really hammered home what could have been.

Howard Ashman would be 75 now. I don’t know what he might have achieved in the past 30 years, but after huge commercial success and changing the philosophy of musical theatre, to have homophobia combine with medical malpractice at a governmental level take him away at just 40 is profoundly sad. He is in some ways an avatar for the millions of people who died, loved but unsupported, of the same disease, but beyond that he is also a shining beacon in his own right, demonstrating pointless loss and impossible possibility.

For both of these artists, it is likely that their relationship with their forthcoming death affected their work: Plath’s Ariel was famously written in an almost fugue state right up to her death as she cared for her children and earned enough money to live post-divorce, and the production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was moved to Ashman’s home and found itself infused with yearning, unspoken yet obvious love, and  triumph over death. I am quite sure that these masterpieces would have been different had their creators not been battling – physically or emotionally – an imminent death, but that in itself is not enough to trade for the possibility and growth of their future work.

There are a million people who die too young, and history is full of random cruel twists of fate. Perhaps if Heinrich Heine had stayed in Prussia he’d never have caught the illness that killed him – but then, he may also never have discovered Saint Simonism, and he’d have to have been a different person for the Von Platten Affair never to have happened at all. If Mary Shelley had not suffered a traumatic miscarriage we would likely never have had Frankenstein. These losses, though horrendous, and rooted in the suffering of a human person, seem more abstract, and part of a crueller world: the past. ‘The Past’ is a nebulous idea, where what has happened is constant, and which is so distant we cannot, except rarely, feel it. ‘The Past’ contains gladiatorial combat, archaic medical practices, and unjust financial systems, it bears no resemblance to the life I am currently living, in this moment. Had Heine lived a long and active life there is still no way he would have overlapped with my life. I can be grateful for how he reacted to what happened to him, all the things that caused him to write as he did, without wishing ill on another person. When, though, confronted with a tragic moment of recent history, we cannot help but centre it on the main character of lives… ourselves. I was too young to understand the death of Howard Ashman, not alive to understand the consequences of Plath’s self-destructive impulses striking on a cold February morning, but the fact that without them I might have lived concurrently to these greats, to be excited about their new works and celebrate in their successes as a fan, gives me a particular kind of pain from the knowledge that I never could.

When Hilary Mantel died, I went to her funeral. I saw the leading literary and theatrical figures of our time celebrate her; I head the people who loved her share their memories; I got to experience her most recent writing. I cried to know that I would never meet somebody who inspired me, but I was grateful that because she lived at the same time as me I could meet people who knew her and react as she did to socio-economic stimuli. I heard her favourite song and it was something I’d listen to myself. In mourning Hilary Mantel I got to know myself better as a reader, an artist, and a fan. When David Bowie died I gathered with fans, tried to honour him and his weirdness, got to see his estate go to somebody who loved and understood him and has been sharing Bowie’s archival work with us that we may continue to celebrate and be inspired by him. I have mourned great artists, cultural figures that changed the world around me, and powerful minds I experienced in some small way; these people are older than me, and established as great by the time I encounter them. Sometimes, though, I am confronted by the awful truth that some people died young, or obscure, or whose death might have been prevented, and although I mourn the person I mourn again: doubly so, for the tragedy of a life cut short.

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On This Topic:

• Heine’s Lazarus sequence is under-read compared to his other poems, and absolutely gut-wrenching. Perfect for fans of Michael Faber, Claudia Rankine, and (of course) Plath. 
• The death of Nisus and Euryalus shows us that this is something people have felt for literally forever. It has stayed with me since school.
• Please tell me who you wish you had been able to mourn in the comments. There must be thousands of people who might be alive now, but for some small thing.

To-Do:

• Finish book on tea before tea lessons
• Figure out next journalling theme
• Get back into fiction-writing headspace

Today’s Culture:

• I hate gluten free bread and would rather just eat rice. Gluten-free pasta is OK, though, and flour-free gnocchi is actually better.
• Bought a lipstick for the first time in forever and YE GODS INFLATION IS A DEMON. I literally took a picture of the meat counter in our grocery store to text to my husband in shock. Can somebody fix the economy or give me a payrise, please?
• I need to get back in the swing of entering writing competitions, but honestly I have been enjoying my year of making, not shilling, content.