Goodbye Davy

These days most celebrity deaths don't upset me too much. I may be sad to hear of their passing, or feel like they were stolen from me, in the case of Amy Winehouse. I may never again feel the inconsolable grief I felt when John Lennon died. When a celebrity dies from their own excesses, after the momentary shock no one is really surprised. But when a celebrity dies of natural causes it jolts us, because they're just like everyone else. Cancer, heart attack and stroke don't respect fame or fortune. The velvet voice of Luther Vandross was silenced by stroke. George Harrison had lung cancer. Both culpable because of their human weaknesses, Luther's a genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and diabetes, George's metastatic lung cancer from years of smoking.
And now Davy Jones. Still "boyish" at 66, a fit and active vegetarian, dead of a massive coronary. This one particularly stings, because he was one of my childhood crushes. His small stature and baby face made him endearing and non-threatening to young girls. He was a child actor long before he was a Monkee, known back then as a "song and dance man". He was simply adorable. Still performing, devoted to his family, his horses and farms, one here in Pennsylvania, he seemed to have either avoided or overcome the perils of celebrity. He did not surround himself with sycophants and enablers. I've heard he was a womanizer, which used to be called, more elegantly a "ladies man". How could someone so eternally youthful, charming and vibrant die of a heart attack alone in hs car like he were anyone else? Because he was human, with frailties like the rest of us. And when it was time for him to shove off this mortal coil, he was gone. Goodbye, Davy, from the seventh grade girl who wrote you all those letters. I always wondered what it would be like if you were a "real boy" instead of a tv star. Now I guess I know.