The mortality reminder, or, have you never been mellow?

[Writer's note: I started this blog in August, saved the draft, and came back to it in December.]

Inevitably as we grow older, the people outside of our lives we only know from TV and movies and music and politics pass on -- just as the people in our lives do. But losing the former is unique in that they are disconnected but, for some, connected in a different way. If the death is tragic and sudden, the pain is shocking (think, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger). However, some beloved celebrities simply grow old and die -- which often is still sad, but carries an air of inevitability.

Consider the golden age of television -- almost all those performers are gone, a fact cemented in the last couple years or so with the passing of Carl Reiner, Betty White, Ed Asner, and Gavin McLeod (please hang on, Dick Van Dyke). Watch a movie from the 1940s, or '50s, or even creeping into the '60, and few of the cast members are still alive. Articles have been written about how we're headed for a rock-and-roll apocalypse -- the surviving members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, and the Beach Boys are north of 70, as are Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and Joni Mitchell. 

When our legends of pop culture pass, and you recall the decades you spent watching, reading, or listening to them, there's a little creep of "How far behind am I?" that can set in. There is one artist for years now I kind of thought to myself, it would sad when they died, but also, oh wow, that will be a stark reminder of my own inevitability. Every now and then, I would hear a song from this artist and remember that. 

That person was Olivia Newton-John, and she died Monday [writer's note: it was Aug. 8]. 

She had been sick before and had beaten cancer twice, but this time, it wasn't meant to be. Plus, she was 73, which isn't as old as 73 used to be, but still, this wasn't exactly a case of someone dying tragically young.

Still, this seems to be hitting many people -- especially Gen Xers -- harder than when other celebrities pass. My sister, who was so into "Grease" and "Physical," said she cried when she heard the news. Girls looked up to Olivia Newton-John, and if you were a tween boy around 1978-1982, she might have been your first celebrity crush. 

And also for me, she was a sort of a mortality beacon. Watch a classic movie or TV show, listen to an oldies radio station or a classic playlist, or browse through the faculty pages of your yearbook, and the people you're watching, listening to, or recalling are closer to dying -- if they're not already gone -- than they were years before. Knowing friends and family we love will die before we do is a terrible knowledge. Knowing celebrities and peripheral people from our lifetimes will is almost surreal and, perhaps, a more stark reminder that we'll be gone someday, too.

So do I arrive at another mortality beacon now that Olivia Newton-John is gone? John Travolta, who keeps losing co-stars [writer's note: Kirstie Alley recently died, too]? Tom Hanks? Paul McCartney? Dick Van Dyke, who is coming up on 100? 

Or, do I stop obsessing and see past the inevitability? Some people would say that's avoiding the nasty concept of mortality, others would say that's a refusal to dwell on the end in place of focusing on the time we have.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I just know Olivia meant a lot to a lot of people. She won't be forgotten.