The year I became aware that there was more of a world outside of my small religious community was 1994, at the tender yet stubborn age of 12. I spent a summer wearing flip flops and bobbing my head to grunge metal riffs about teen angst. Kurt Cobain was the first musician to reach his fingers through the tiny speakers in my headphones and turn my veins to ice and my heart to a steaming glop of unhinged emotion. I felt alive and free, inside my own little headphone world. Five children and two angry adults could never create the music I found within the solitude of my room, nirvana cds strewn on the floor, posters of Hendrix and Marley, peeling at the edges. Early that year, Kurt Cobain put a gun to his head and took his own life, a very stomach churning death for a 12 year old girl to swallow. I heard the news along side my best of friends. Nicole, the girl I always looked up to and idolized, crumbled into a heap as the news was delivered over the small stereo we huddled in front of. She sobbed, and without notice locked herself in the bathroom and carved the word KURT into her arm with the business end of a lady bic. Ten years later, I caught a glimpse of this scar during a brief encounter with her in the grocery store of my home town. Her hair was longer, she was still far more beautiful than I could stomach, and I envied her passion as she spoke quietly about her life. I was crushed too, when I heard the news of my beloved blonde haired, gorgeous eyed, crooning Kurt. I cried deep sobs into my pillow and questioned my most concrete beliefs on the afterlife. I mourned the loss of a man whom I had never met. But I had not mourned quite so much as she had, not quite as hard nor quite as permanently tragic. Today, as we are all taking a moment to watch the drama that unfolds at the staple center, to bid goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson I remember the last time I mourned someone I had not known. I spent a little bit of time in a chat room where hate-filled comments attacked the notion that paying respects to the man was in some way, consequential to life as we know it. Yes, I admit that when I heard the news about Michael Jackson and I sat back watching the coverage in shock, I cried. I sobbed my little eyes out for the man who wrote the soundtrack to my life. I am sad, though thrilled I can share the music with my children and enjoy it myself, but this blog isnt really about me. It is about mourning, how it is the right of every person to go about it in their own way. To those of you who are crying that people are making too big of a deal of too small of a man, I beg you to step aside. Many people are devestated, many people are angry, and many people are happy about these events. Your passions are your passions, and mine are mine. Perhaps I want to take a moment out of my day to mourne the loss of something that brought me joy. Perhaps you want to get to and from work without having to hear about him on every single station.

Please don’t tell me how to mourn, and I wont tell you how to channel surf.

© 2009, AntiSoccermom. All rights reserved to the original author unless stated otherwise.