I'm Glad My Mom Isn't Around For This

My mom had many, many movie star crushes, some typical, some not-so (she had a big crush on Steve Buscemi, for example, and had a framed picture of him in her bathroom.) I can still see her handwriting in the letter she wrote me about her latest crush at the time, a "very talented young actor named Keith Ledger." Being the cunty, eye-rolling bitch I was often wont to be w/r/t my mom, I used to tell people about her constant erroneous take on his name. [In her defense, it turns she was not alone!] When I found out yesterday that he had died, the first thing I thought was that I was glad my mom wasn't around to know that "Keith Ledger" had died at 28 -- it would have broken her heart.

There are a lot of things I am glad my mother has missed. Another horrible flooding of her tiny apartment, her sister's death last July, my cousin's suicide last year, now Heath Ledger's death. It sounds insane but I know she would have been a wreck, not only for the premature loss of an actor whose good looks and talent she loved and crushed on, but because it would be just another reminder of how deeply sad and wrong the world can seem -- I remember how she was when John Lennon died.