This is not a meditation upon bird watching – unless of course you are familiar with the English vernacular as it is spoken in some of the Commonwealth countries, in which case it therefore might be. In that case, the “bird” in question is one whose smiling visage and shapely form graced the walls of millions of men (and perhaps even a few women) throughout the 1970s. I refer, of course, to the pin-up icon and actress Farah Fawcett.
Like most males of the western world who reached adolescence prior to 1980, I had the sacred scroll bearing the image of Ms. Fawcett’s California tan and tousled mane of hair thumb-tacked in a place of honor on my bedroom wall as a testimony to my membership in the ancient and accepted order of men. However as both I and Ms. Fawcett grew older, we lost touch with one another until I doubt either one of us thought of the other one at all (it’s called “poetic license” – just accept it and move on). Then the other day I picked up a newspaper and read a short article that brought all my memories of her flooding back into my mind; however they were quickly thrown askew by what I read – she has terminal cancer.
I will dispense with most of the standard reflections on how, like most icons, I could not even imagine her aging let alone facing the mortal end we shall all meet someday. Do we think of Marilyn Monroe of James Dean as anything other than at the pinnacle of their charismatic vivacity? So I imagine it also is for Ms. Fawcett’s myriad admirers; she will always be smiling, always have her head joyously tilted back just on the verge of laughing. Yet as I read I knew that she is no longer that carefree sprite I knew from my younger years. She is very ill, finished (so it was reported in the article) with the many treatments that were unable to halt the cancer’s relentless advance through her body, and spending her remaining time with her family with only one expressed wish – to be left in peace.
Perhaps it was the guilt I felt at previously and wrongly having viewed her as little more than a pretty piece of flesh, perhaps it was because as a cancer survivor myself I have a first-hand understanding of some of the treatments she endured, or perhaps it was simply because I was suddenly confronted with the awareness that a fellow human being whose life had intersected with mine was suffering – I know not; all I know is that at that moment my heart broke for her. Over the two years of her cancer treatment she has been hounded by the tabloid media, both print and electronic, that reported (often falsely) every private detail of her life. For one who is healthy such attention must be difficult enough – but for one who is undergoing the battery of treatments that comprise modern medicine’s arsenal against cancer, this must have been sheer Hell.
No one whom I know participates in the tabloid media (or at least admits it to me) but for those who may I would ask this: if you see a copy of one of these periodicals at your local news stand or supermarket magazine rack and notice it to carry a report on Ms. Fawcett’s condition, leave it unbought knowing that she played no part in any article it may carry (the last interview she is said to have given was in August of 2008 to the Los Angeles Times; an interview to be published this coming Friday). Should you have any interest in Ms. Fawcett either now or as you remember her once to have been, please grant her the simple dignity of leaving her in peace. If you are so inclined, I’m reasonably certain a quiet prayer for her and her family would be appreciated as well.
