Who would have thought that some sympathy would face so much criticism?
When Amy Winehouse died on Saturday, we didn’t just lose one of the greatest singers of our time. Her parents lost a daughter, many lost a friend. Yet, most of Amy’s obituaries, along with endless angry tweets and facebook updates, were preoccupied by pondering the apparently surprising scenario that her death left thousands if not millions of people shocked, sad, almost speechless. Amy’s destructive lifestyle had been well-documented by the media: we shouldn’t be surprised, so we shouldn’t be sad.
As if the death of a young person could ever really be comprehensibly predictable, because of addictions or depressions or self harm or long lists of pills you don’t even know the names of. I knew back in 2006 that my sister was thinking about killing herself, because she told me. Still, when she did, it shocked me to the core. Because no matter how sick you are, how many demons you’re struggling with, the unthinkable remains unthinkable.
As if the predictable can’t be sad; as if fact equals acceptance. Would you have said the same thing to me the day before I went in to give birth to my fatally ill son? I knew that he wouldn’t survive, but that never stopped me from mourning the loss of my firstborn.
But Amy was just a drug addict. She brought it on herself. (Or, as someone said on facebook, “I couldn’t give a shit about Amy Winehouse. She was an idiot and she brought it on herself, so zero sympathy.”)
Focus on Norway. Now that’s a tragedy. (Yes, many people were seriously offended by the amount of attention given to the death of the troubled singer, because they felt that it should have been over-shadowed by the much more devastating events in Norway.)
As if an addict doesn’t deserve being paid tribute to. As if losing a miserable, self-destructive daughter would somehow be easier than losing one who is happy, generous, blissfully unaware of what’s to come. As if it’s a competition and you have to choose: pick no more than one terrible incident at any one time, and grieve that. And don’t you dare mention that mess of a drug addict called Amy.
People can be as cynical as they like about it all and say that sad things happen all the time. I’m aware of that, and I don’t mind them taking the piss out of people like me, who are shocked again and again by bad news. I don’t even mind if they feel the need to compare and say that Norway is worse – because even if I don’t see how comparing loss is possible or even appropriate, I understand that it comes from fear and not ignorance: it was a deliberate attack on democracy; many victims were innocent teenagers; and, that notion that’s so hard to digest – that they were all just normal, sane people, just like us.
What bothers me is the narrow-minded view of addiction: the idea that a girl who goes from eating disorders to self harm and addiction only has herself to blame and that she’s somehow worth less than other people, in extreme cases the opinion that she actually deserves to die. It makes me feel physically sick that there are people in my online network who genuinely don’t understand that self harm and addiction are more complicated than the thing we call choice. It’s not only a heartless stance, but one that says a lot about the society we live in.
The death of a 27-year-old woman is a sad thing no matter how predictable you insist that it was. The death of Amy Winehouse was perhaps particularly sad, because of the hostility and ignorance it exposed in us.
