David Bowie, Death Doula

Yes.  I'm going to blog about David Bowie.  With all that's been said in the days since he passed, what more is left to say about the man who brought us Ziggy Stardust?  I've never been a huge Bowie fan, though I certainly enjoy some of his iconic songs.  But I appreciate the genius he represented -- he didn't push boundaries so much as he trampled over them.  He experimented and provoked, taunted and flaunted.  You didn't have to like him, but you couldn't ignore him.

An icon from my childhood and youth, and an inspiration to both the geeks and the cool kids worldwide, he was certainly unique.  He deserves the accolades, the outpouring of grief, the comparisons to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart in terms of impact on music and culture (see the CBC's panel, which included Jeff Melanson, CEO of the Toronto Symphony orchestra, discussing David Bowie's legacy:  http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2681722085).  But, after the fashion statements, weird music, bold makeup, and duet with Bing Crosby, it appears that David Bowie's lasting legacy may be in how he has made a generation of antiseptic and overprotected baby boomer offspring face the ugliness of death and find beauty within it.

I remember the first funeral I attended.  I was maybe eight or ten years old.  It was for the grandmother of friends of ours from church.  She was tiny and ancient, and she always dressed in black, in constant mourning for the husband who had died many years before her.  A classic Greek yiayia, she cooked and baked the most amazing food and pastries, and blessed her granddaughters and their friends with a firm grip of wrinkled hands and kiss of thin, leathery lips. On the nights she stayed home alone, when the family was out visiting or at Greek community dances, she would watch Dracula movies in the darkened house -- she laughed at these movies and never seemed afraid.

Her funeral was attended by the whole community, she was everyone's grandmother.  I remember approaching her coffin, with some trepidation.  What I saw was a shell of the woman, her eyes closed, with a greyness to her flesh, white hair combed and stilled with hair spray.  Her hands, cold to the touch, were crossed over her, possibly holding onto a small icon.  My fear and sadness immediately evaporated.  It wasn't her.  She wasn't there.  There was nothing to fear.

I admit to not having thought of David Bowie or his music for many years, so I was caught off guard by the release of his last album, and the subsequent news of his death two days later.  Hearing him now, and seeing him as an older and sick man, is disturbing and humbling.  He makes us look him in the eyes -- while he himself is staring down death -- and forces us to watch as he retreats before the grim reaper's arrival, to whom he says simply: come and get me.  It's a last laugh -- if nothing else, a stroke of marketing genius -- but also a gift and a reality check:  He forces us to consider, and to talk about, death in all its ugly glory.

Is it sad that he could not imagine a more beautiful death?  Yes, maybe.  Perhaps in the end he felt some peace and went softly into the night.  But to watch the videos of Lazarus and Blackstar it seems that was not what he was expecting.  I'm reminded of my mother's final hours.  They didn't feel peaceful, for her or for those of us around her.  She didn't go softly.  I think she was angry.  She, too, was staring down death, making it come to her.  She wasn't going down without a fight.  In the end, it wasn't quite what she had planned.  There was pain.  There was breathing anxiety.  There was confusion.  Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken.

But there was beauty.

As her breathing slowed, we retreated, taking comfort in each other and drifting to sleep to the sound of her rhythmic breaths.  There was beauty in that.  I wrapped her prayer shawl around me, feeling warmth and comfort.  There was beauty in that.  I remember my aunt's soft voice, whispering tenderly to her sister: It's time.  You've given good witness.  Go.  There was beauty in that.  As we left the hospice and accompanied her body to the hearse, a flock of starlings circled overhead as if taking her spirit with them. There was beauty in that.

There was a lot of ugliness in Bowie's music, in the lyrics and the images that accompanied them.  And there was beauty. In his face, his skin almost transluscent; in his clothing, colourful and flamboyant; in the videos, with candles and chanting.  In the midst of so much ugliness in the world, he compelled us to take notice:  to acknowledge that beauty and art are what we make of it and with it; to realize that creativity is to be celebrated and shared;  to remember that we may have a single moment -- or a lifetime -- to find our calling, to create something, to find beauty in ugliness; and to learn, that when death does come -- as it will, for a mother, a grandmother or a famous singer -- we can meet it proudly, defiantly, confidently, creatively, knowing that our energy will continue, unfolding through the expanding universe where there is immeasurable and unending beauty.