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THE PILGRIM, Friday, January 6, 2022*
While
I’ve absolutely zero morbid fascination with death, it’s my conviction that being
able to see how celebrities—hallowed as they often are—face their own death or
its imminence teaches us a great lesson about the vulnerabilities of the human
condition.
There
was as much to learn about death as there was about life last Friday when acclaimed
American actress and comedian, Betty White, succumbed to mortality at the age of
99, three weeks before her 100th birthday—much to the consternation
of her fans in Zambia and all over the world.
Of
course, her own death didn’t qualify as ridiculous, but it was the media hype
surrounding her upcoming birthday that triggered derision and mockery.
Anticipated
widely, her forthcoming birthday had become the subject of a documentary under
the perky title Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration.
It
would also feature as the cover story in the famous People magazine, where she would
share her secrets for happiness and talk about her celebrity crush.
All
this was going well until fate threw a spanner in the works.
The
Golden Girls star herself, caught up in the publicity hype, tweeted thus: “My
100th birthday…. I cannot believe it is coming up.”
What
Betty didn’t know was that she wouldn’t live to see her 100th year
because soon after tweeting and raving about it on December 28, 2021, she died
of natural causes on December 31, 2021.
Before
long, bedlam broke loose on Twitter, with some of Betty’s fans suddenly taking
offence at People magazine’s premature cover article on her, which they said
had jinxed the actress after it started making rounds on social media.
“It
is one reason media,” one Twitter user wrote, “shouldn’t count chickens before
they are hatched.” Another one said, “I think about how many people got psyched
about her 100th birthday but are now frantically editing stuff and
rescheduling things. . .”
The
public’s reluctance to accept such an anticlimax immediately re-emphasised
man’s helplessness in matters that continue to spectacularly harass and defy
human control and intelligence.
Other
than that, it was a telltale sign of how endlessly vulnerable the human
condition is and remains, irrespective of how much fame or power an individual
has.
Rising
100 years old and appearing to do so effortlessly, Betty had become a larger-than-life
personality that continually had a mesmeric effect on television audiences, and
everyone was waiting to see her go big for her birthday, like she promised.
Her
own agent and close friend, Jeff Witjas, said “even though Betty was about to
be 100, I thought she would live forever.” You hear that?
It
is shocking, given the range of reactions elicited by Betty’s death, how man’s
curiosity continues to fantasize with the idea of immortality on earth, hoping
that somehow one person might live passed 150 or 200 years.
So
we tend to become enthusiasts of available old age, as the case was with the
deceased American entertainer.
You
can see, for example, that People magazine adored Betty not only for her accomplished
career, but also for her very long life.
According
to the New York Times, editors at the said magazine spent months working on
what I would call a Betty issue, only to be greeted with the shock of her death
as copies of the publication were arriving in the mailboxes of subscribers on
Friday.
As
a journalist myself, I must speculate that this experience must have been devastating
for the journalist who had been communicating with the witty millionaire star.
I
can understand how frustrating it is for journalists to rejig news content because
of my own experience at the Zambia Daily Mail, where we once changed major
sections of news copy when former president Kenneth Kaunda died.
With
the latest experience coming through the death of this celebrated American
comedian, I believe that it’s high time people all over the world accepted that
all our reasonable and unreasonable expectations are limited by Almighty God,
and that mortality and frailty are distinctive features of human existence.
And
we must also be sure, no matter how great we prove to be, not to fall for the false
sense of invincibility that creeps in while we are at the height of our
creative powers.
We
must remember that Betty’s death reminded us of our own limitation, and also
did the deaths of legendary preachers like Billy Graham and TB Joshua, who many
of us thought might never die but, at the very least, just disappear into
eternity.
I
remember that as with Betty, managers of Billy Graham’s social media platforms
were ecstatic about a heavily anticipated centennial birthday with premature
hashtags BG100 on every post that they made. To cut the long story short,
however, the beloved evangelist, fondly referred to as America’s Pastor, never
lived to see his 100th birthday.
And
for whatever reason, I don’t want to imagine what would happen if any of these notable
characters lived beyond 100 years! But you probably have an idea: they would be
the subject of idolatry among impressionable people!
My
final comment on this is that while it is good to celebrate the long life of celebrities
like Betty, we shall be overstretching reality once we start expecting them
to live longer beyond our wildest imaginations.
*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's best-selling newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail
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