Natasha Richardson
Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson
As we all know, the actor Natasha Richardson died yesterday as a result of what was reported to be a rather nominal fall during a ski lesson. What a horrendous tragedy for her family and friends, and especially for her two young sons.
I've loved and venerated Vanessa Redgrave all my life--nearly literally. She is my favorite actor, and I've seen most of her movies many times. So it was a special pleasure to see Natasha and Joely Richardson grow into such fantastic actors in their own right. I can't say I wasn't already partial to them because of their mother. Of course I was. And, of course, I could see and hear their mother in their features, mannerisms and voices.
So I'm actually quite devastated to know that Natasha Richardson is gone. And from something so simple as a bump on the head.
Our heads. Think about our heads. Our brains. The complete history of our lives in that small space in our skull. Everything we've thought of or remember, have read and studied, hoped for or dreamed of--right there. All our feelings--our love or hate or bitterness or happiness. All there. A complete world in such a small space.
It's strange to think that the ending of a life takes a smaller world out of our shared larger world, but isn't that true? We carry our own personal landscapes within us, some part of which we try to share, some part of which we never can or never would. And thank God that's true. All of us, I'm sure, have often been quite grateful our thoughts and feelings are private.
With every person's passing, however, we lose what they might have said or done. Those possibilities are gone. Their personal dreams and thoughts are gone. Forever. And that is a loss as painful as the absence of their presence. Having said goodbye to too many people in the last few years, their physical loss is like a phantom limb. It pains me but I know what it is. What haunts me but what I can never really know is what they might have wanted to say or do or be.
A simple bump on the head has deleted a life and a lifetime of a woman's private, unshared memories and feelings and a complete world of possibility--what she might have wanted to share, planned to share.
That's incredibly tragic but it reminds me that we're all quite marvelous. We all have miraculous worlds between our ears. Let's please remember to live them and leave as few of our dreams and hopes to our imagination as we can, because that imagination leaves the world when we do.
God rest and keep you, Natasha Richardson. Brava.