Every morning of this past week there has been something new to write about.  It’s ridiculous.  Just when I think the world is going to calm down there’s another death, another engagement or another plane or train crash.  The sensationalism we’re all living with was enough to keep me up last night pondering all of this.  Just a few hours before I went to sleep I was chewing another pillow watching the Bachelorette.  My husband was on his computer next to me barely watching until I whacked him with the pillow and said, “Can you believe this!?  Why do I watch this show?  I’m so mad right now!”  I fumed around the house before scrubbing my teeth much harder than usual.  Now that I’ve slept and woke up with bright whites, I’m not sure I’m any less confused, but I’m rested.   I’m in a state of numbness due to “the most dramatic____________” fill it in with whatever you want: death, accident, rose ceremony yet.  There’s no end.  My cup overfloweth… somehow I don’t think that is what that phrase is supposed to mean.  And why is the cup just flowing and flowing?  

For me last night, it was a sense that I know Jillian.  Okay I don’t at all, but after rooting for her last season on the Bachelor with yet another “most dramatic season ever,” I was pulling for her.  She was the Canadian girl-next-door with her hot dog lessons, and steamy hot tub scenes who wasn’t looking for Prince Charming, she was looking for her best friend to echo her grandparents long happy marriage.  The girl seemed to have a good head on her shoulders.  Fast forward to last night and I need a massage after cringing every time I heard her squeal.  She is totally buying into the fantasy… head over heals.  As much as she says she wants to make her own decision about love, it’s hard to watch her send quality guys home.  If I was her best friend, I would be on a plane right now to have some serious talks with the girl… Wes???? Seriously??  

I know, I know, there’s editing and manipulation.  There’s a TON of alcohol.  It’s all a made for TV reality show that is nothing like reality.  But here we are in a nation where it wasn’t an international crisis that shut down the internet, it was the death of a celebrity.  I am not trying to undermine the tragic circumstances that surrounded last week, but seriously our nation needs something to live for, and sadly it’s tough to see people congregated outside UCLA medical center hoping to see what?  It’s like disciples waiting for the Lord to rise into the clouds.  People changed their vacations to stay in LA longer. It’s all over the news, and the sad part is no one there knew him.  Janet Jackson said it best, “to you he was an icon; to us he is family.”  They are the ones people should be gathering around, but people think they “know” him, so they gather at the hospital as if it were their brother who had just stopped breathing.  We think we deserve access to the autopsies and medical records and custody hearings because we “know” him.  The truth is we don’t.  Even if we memorized all the moves to Thriller, hardly anyone really knew this mysterious man.  For the Jackson family’s and friend’s sake, I don’t want to read about it anymore.  Not because I’m heartless but because death is bad enough outside of the spotlight.  We don’t know how to deal with it, hence the attention.  Cemeteries are outside of towns behind huge walls.  We dress the dead up in make-up to make it look like they are asleep.  (Seriously, I had to go to my grandmother’s open casket funeral and I was so mad because the woman did her make-up all wrong.  It looked nothing like her.)  We don’t do heartache well either.  

This morning the dumpee from the last season of the Bachelor, Melissa Rycroft, announced that she was engaged… oh thank god. We can all breathe a sigh of relief; she’s going to be okay; she found a man.  Is anyone thinking wow, she just dealt with the biggest break-up on national television less than 6 months ago?  And then has been shuttled from show to show to continue her 15 minutes?  I don’t know her, so I’m definitely one that should back off a bit, but I just wonder about these things when seemingly the whole nation jumps on board simultaneously.  We’re like lemmings.  I don’t want to be a lemming, so I ask questions and write blogs.  Of course I have to tune in next week… they’re going to Spain.  No seriously though, I wish Jillian the best, I’m just not convinced after 14 seasons and one marriage, that she will get the best.  I will continue watching because it’s absurd and ridiculous that people still think this will work.  I don’t think it will work, but it’s like a car accident, I can’t stop watching.  

The difference between the hospital waiting room in the parking lot and the show is that Jillian signed a contract to be in the public’s eye.  So did Michael, Farrah, Ed, and the OxiClean guy who was always yelling at me, but death, although public in these cases, is still personal and private to those who knew these people dearly. It is not a reality tv show.  It would be fine to say they touched our lives in profound ways, even breaking down huge racial barriers, but we also need to let the dead rest in peace and let the families do what they need to do to grieve and move on. How do you do that with 100 cameras outside your home cataloguing your every tear? We need to be better at asking questions of why are we doing what we’re doing.  Is it really that important that the internet should collapse?  Maybe I’m a cynic in this case, but all too quickly Neda’s death in Iran is becoming “so 2 weeks ago.”  And I just can’t move on that fast from something that is plaguing an entire nation on the other side of the world.  No I didn’t know Neda either, but I’m praying for Iran because the situation hasn’t gotten better just because CNN no longer has it on the header of their website.  We might be better at grieving and heartache if our society didn’t live in the “most dramatic season yet” that needs new drama every week.  We forget things we shouldn’t too quickly and we remember things we should have let go years ago.  We want drama, but we also want happy endings… at any cost.  And when they don’t come, we mill around and don’t know what to with ourselves.  That was me last night brushing my teeth, trying to fall asleep asking myself, “Really do I care?”  I want to care about things worth caring about.  Death is never something to get used to; break-ups are never fun – but they are realities of life we try to avoid.  I don’t want to avoid these true realities of life, but I want to live my own life, not other people’s.   I can tune in to the news and get my daily dose, or watch a show, but when the lines blur of reordering my life around people I didn’t know, don’t work for, and am not related to, that’s when things get really hazy.  And it’s only Tuesday…