LONG STORY, SHORT ENDING

I know this past week has been non-stop Whitney Houston and that has been really annoying and baffling to some people to which I am very close.  "How can they honor a drug addict and alcoholic?" they ask.  But here is how I answer that question.  The proverbial "they" aren't honoring her decline, her fall from grace, but they are honoring who she once was:  a young woman whose future brimmed with light and life.  And by her sharing her gifts with the world, she brightened all our lives as well.  We celebrated her by buying her CD's, watching her movies and yes, expecting more and more of the same.  "To whom much is given, much is expected."  As we do with all celebrities, we put them on pedestals and then when they falter from all the weight of the never ending, unrealistic expectations we put upon them, we click our tongues out of pity and disgust as we watch them fall, ever so far, down that slippery slope of what used to be.
Don't get me wrong.  We, the public, did not cause Whitney's death, nor Michael Jackson's, nor Elvis', nor Heath Ledger's or any of the others who have fallen to drugs and despair.  Even their families cannot be blamed.  Many family members tried, and tried again, to get their sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, the help they needed, but in the end, it was the person, him/herself, who was responsible for his/her own demise.
But, what's the saddest thing of all to me, is to watch the early videos of these young people, how they had their whole lives ahead of them, how they were so young, innocent and full of promise.......until they lost their way.  As they aged- a big curse in Hollywood- they couldn't put the genie back in the bottle, try as they might (ex- Demi Moore and Whitney both partied with their teenaged daughters).  Think of Whitney at age 19, where she first started out on the Merv Griffin show and look now at her 18 year old daughter.  Her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, has had to live with two drug addicted parents all her life and now, the closest person to her in the entire world, has died.  What a starting off point to adulthood that is!  Whitney, on the other hand, had a very strong mother who guided Whitney with rules and boundaries.  Whitney's road ahead of her was bright and exciting; Bobbi Kristina's is scary and full of grief.  Hopefully, because of what BK has experienced, she will have enough support around her that her star can still shine through the clouds and she can make her mom proud.  I do wish this for her.
   I think both Whitney's bodyguards- her real one, and Kevin Costner, spoke so eloquently at the funeral when they reminded us that superstars are real people, with insecurities and  anxieties, just like the rest of us. No matter how good they are at their craft, they still wonder if they measure up to others' standards.  We need to stop ridiculing them when they don't measure up anymore. It reminds me of falling in love.  Those first 6 months or so when we can barely eat, sleep or think clearly, because our brain chemicals are on overdrive (an anthropologist just recently compared this phenomenon as having the same effect on us as cocaine would!) cannot be sustained. We all know this from our own experiences.  How difficult it must be, then, to have to keep trying to top one's own hit record or movie, again and again and again, for years!
Let's just try to remember that these superstars were once young, with childhood dreams just like we had, they went to our high schools, they sang in our churches; they were, for a time, one of us.  Let's applaud their successes......only without the pedestals.
Whitney, yours was a voice that will sing through the ages.