When I first read of Peaches Geldof’s death on my Twitter feed, my heart ached for the loss of a young mother and for her two babies. The 25 year-old-British TV presenter, model, writer and daughter of Bob Geldof was found dead in her home in Wrotham, Kent – initial postmortem cause of death ruled inconclusive.
Her death catching all of us by surprise would be an understatement. The death of a vibrant, youthful, beautiful woman – what society considers the image of perfect health- challenged what we believed to be the natural order of things. Death – we all collectively fool ourselves into believing- comes at the very end, after we’ve spent a lifetime cultivating memories, accomplishing goals and our bodies growing old and giving way. But when does death ever really happen on our terms? We were left to speculate how this mother and media personality could have died so suddenly and unexpectedly.
No one ever chooses under what circumstances one’s born into. Peaches was born into rockstar royalty, bequeathed with not only the fame and fortune of her celebrity parents, but all the dysfunction that comes with sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. No amount of money in the world protected her from the scandals of drug addiction and suicide as the media perilously documented her coming of age in the limelight. Her eventual vocal resolve to chart her own way was admirable and inspirational, perfectly cultivating the image of a mama metamorphosis set on doing right by her two sons.
Almost a month later, we get the answer that no one wanted to believe – Peaches Geldof died of a likely heroin overdose. The same drug that killed her mother Paula Yates in 2000 when Peaches was only 11 years old. The parallel deaths of mother and daughter are disheartening, a tragic story of a reformed wild child turned into model mommy only to inherit the same untimely death of her mother and leaving behind another generation robbed of a mother’s love. And then came the unfortunate vitriol on social media -unrestrained, judgemental and cruel – along with another outpouring of grief and calls for compassion.
Social media such as Twitter and Instagram gives all of us the illusion of familiarity, of having intimate access to the everyday lives of celebrities. A follow, a “like”, a “share” and a few words exchanged become the social currency of feeling connected however non-existent in the real world. Peaches invited the public into her private life, sharing glimpses of happy, fleeting moments of a gorgeous young family just starting out. Because social media has allowed many to relate to her as a friend and a familiar face, her death and the sordid details behind it becoming part of dinner time conversations.
If we were to learn from the recent death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, chances are that the most recent revelation of Peaches Geldof’s death will inspire another round of essays and media coverage on addiction and relapse, unfounded speculation of her mental health and unwarranted reasons as to why she relapsed. My sneaking suspicion, however, is that she won’t be the addict that everyone would want to relate to. Who would want to identify with someone given that at the time of her death, her eleven-month old son was supposed to be under her care? While Peaches death is still fresh in our minds, chances are that she’ll become the newest poster child for a cautionary tale against drugs.
While I may not have known Peaches personally, her public persona was always around my periphery as a fellow mommy with relatable views about attachment parenting and having sons around the same age. But it was her story about redemption and reformation brought on by motherhood that struck a personal chord with me. In a recent interview with Mother & Baby magazine, Peaches opened up about her feelings towards her children, confessing “I felt finally anchored in place, with lives that literally depend on me, and I am not about to let them down, not for anyone or anything.”
I was rooting for her. We all were.
Learning that Peaches died due to a heroine overdose felt like a betrayal, the universe laughing in our faces for believing in happy endings, rainbows and fairytales. The fact that she died of a heroine overdose changes everything and nothing at the same time. The world is less forgiving to someone who dies at the unscrupulous hand of an illicit drug, unable to battle her own demons and protect her children from the same ill-handed fate of growing up without a mother. Had the post-mortem results declared that she died from a fatal, unforeseen heart condition, a brain aneurysm, or cancer, she would be remembered as a wonderful mother taken cruelly away by life’s unfair hand. Now her death has become fodder for the media, the world turning away from sympathy and grief and towards disdain and apathy, an irresistible bait for trolls lurking around unwilling to let a dead woman rest in peace.
But…. I still mourn for her and her sons…. because I am a mom.
They say that becoming a mother changes you, that it expands your heart a million fold and opens you up to so much love that you thought you never had. As a mom, you begin to see the world differently. Or perhaps more accurately, makes you more acutely aware of the fragility of life. You realize that everyone around you was also once a baby in a mother’s arms.
What no one told me but I’ve come realize in my two years of being a mom is that parenthood is possibly the most unifying experience around the world. It’s a rite-of-passage to run into other parents who with just one look let’s you know that they empathize with your current struggles and gently reminds you when you’re in the thick of it, that it’ll get better. A random stranger interviewed by Humans of New York on his reflections on becoming a parent echoed the sentiment “Because you suddenly relate to everyone else on earth who has a child. No matter what race, class, or creed.”
My own disappointment and anyone else’s opinions about Peaches’ death shouldn’t deviate from the bigger picture – the loss of a twenty-five year old mother of two young boys under the age of two. The involvement of heroin makes Peaches’ untimely death even more tragic, not less. It should illicit more compassion because doing so is what makes us human.
So I mourn not for a celebrity, but for a mother who’ll never get to realize dreams that all moms hold close to their hearts – to witness her sons grow up. I mourn for a motherless mother who desperately needed the love of her own mother, falling into a loneliness that no one could ever pull her out of. But most of all, I mourn for two young boys, babies in their own right, barely old enough to remember her and who need nothing more in the world than their mother.
And I’ll be holding my little one tighter tonight as he falls asleep in my arms, dreaming of what dreams may come.
Photo source: Wikimedia
