The adventurous spirit and gifted storyteller, who took viewers and readers around the globe, died Friday morning. By suicide. Days after Kate Spade, and countless others.
I jolted awake at 4:30 this morning, after getting a not-so-solid hour and a half. On a laundry list of things in deficit, nightly sleep is up there. Lately I've been questioning a lot about life, my past, my present, and my unknown future. Receiving an early am reminder about life's fragility was pretty on-point.
Immediately after waking and kissing my dog on the snout, I open Facebook - the morning ritual. Posts about Anthony Bourdain's suicide flooded my newsfeed. I instantly thought of my ex boyfriend and sent him a text notifying him of Bourdain's death. My ex boyfriend, a fellow adventurous spirit and gifted storyteller, turned me onto Bordain. I instantly noted their parallels - something I never told him, partly because his ego was already the size of Texas.
Kate Spade's death shook me mostly due to her success, even though I know those don't counteract depression. I didn't really have any strong connection beyond that... as I've never owned any of her bags. But Bourdain always reminded me of my ex. So it hit me on a different level.
Life is a magical web of connectedness -- somehow or another, we're all linked. Like a giant web. And even if we don't know someone personally, we mourn them for what they represented to us and to whom they connected us - the little fibers of life's web.
And when one of those lives ends, it sends a jolt of energy down the web, through the intricate fibers and to the lives it touched. I imagine that's why I instantly thought of and texted my ex.
Then the energy dissipates and transfers, and is displaced to new connections. Disconnecting the previously connected.
Maybe that’s part of time’s secret for being the ultimate healer. Eventually everything that connects you to someone dies.
Life is so fragile. Make and cherish connections. And most of all, look out for one another.