Thoughts on the Passing of David Bowie

Beautiful artwork from the Rolling Stone review of Blackstar

I'm really not the type of person that takes celebrity deaths super hard. Generally speaking, I am comfortable with the idea of death and loss, as I don't necessarily see dying as a horrible thing. It's just another type of very long good-bye. Sad, yes. But unless it was a gruesome, tragic, or grossly premature death, I see it as the most natural thing -- as natural and normal as birth.

Even so, the news of David Bowie's death hit me very hard. I've always known that it would, but I still don't think I was very well prepared for the reality of it. He'd just had a birthday two days prior. We celebrated it by watching the Five Years documentary and his newest music video for "Lazarus". I even remember verbally hoping that he'd be around for another 20 years, because his drive and creativity didn't appear to have diminished at all. Then I heard all about it. That he'd secretly been battling cancer for 18 months and knew he'd be leaving all of us very soon.