By Steven Stajich
Mortality: Never just the completion of our
temporality, but also everything that can come
before.
It felt a little bit like a brick had been thrown
through a window last week when pop star and
singer David Cassidy revealed that he was suf-
fering with dementia. Not that Cassidy loomed
in any special way in my own life. Even in his
prime, Cassidy and the Partridge Family and
the sunny ‘rock’ songs that issued forth from
their frothy TV confection were anathema to
those of us who thought the Rolling Stones
had it right with “Sympathy for the Devil.”
The Partridge Family was what rock/pop mu-
sic would have been had it all somehow been
generated by Nixon’s daughters Trisha and
Julie.
But I grew-up with two sisters, so “The Par-
tridge Family” show was on our TV screen
and female crushes on David Cassidy ensued.
Within the confines of that TV series, I sup-
pose Cassidy was the one that struck you as
being most in charge right after uber-mom
Shirley Jones.
Having come out regarding his dementia to
People Magazine earlier this week, Cassidy
likely realized that now his suffering would
be, at least a little bit, shared by the public the
way musician Glen Campbell’s Alzheimer’s
diagnosis was beginning in 2011. While both
events feel like a view into darkness, there is
always the hopeful upside that going pubic
increases awareness and speeds along needed
research on diseases of mind and memory that
are something of an unspoken fear within the
ranks of my own generation.
Those with family or friends suffering with
Alzheimer’s don’t need me to confirm the hor-
ror of it. When those you love begin to depart
by way of not recognizing their loved ones or
themselves, you are struck not only with the
sometimes grotesque unfairness of life but
with how little we sometimes appreciate the
delicate balance of our fragile working body
systems. Like the things that can be taken
away by a tiny blood clot following a stroke.
But back to that brick. We’ve been so full of
vinegar lately because of the elections and the
entropy within the walls of the White House
that something like David Cassidy’s woes
tends to bring us back to earth again. Yes,
we’re currently in a struggle on a national lev-
el that has global implications, and “the whole
world is watching” as demonstrators used to
chant in the 1960s during a time of somewhat
parallel dissent and upheaval. We’re even back
out on the streets as many of us were then.
But much as the marching and the outrage
can be justified, we should never lose our
sense of the moment-to-moment theater of life
itself. There may be a certain sort of romance
to the various forms our resistance is taking.
There is little that is romantic about the cells in
a human brain deteriorating.
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell was nev-
er intended by Ms. Mitchell or her record com-
pany to be an inspirational guide to more fully
appreciating life. But the simple line, “You
don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” is
a standout in a generational soundtrack that
now seems to resonate with almost every piece
of news and information. Oil pipes violating
sacred lands and spilling waste where before
there was nature. A shortage of water, then
not enough dam to contain too much water. A
graceful First Family replaced by shiny lunk-
heads who look at the crises of the world and
think, “I better Tweet about Ivanka’s clothing
line…”
We are experiencing a time when we can
share battle stories, if you will, and be under-
stood by our peers. But these terrible wars rag-
ing in the human body can sometimes only be
fully known when you’ve been there with the
sufferer… or it’s happening to you.
And yet we have forever understood the
deal: That life is not only fragile but short,
even as we extend it with diet and exercise
and medical breakthroughs. In digging for
meaning in David Cassidy’s announcement
I came across the writing of Marty Rubin, a
South Florida gay activist, author, and jour-
nalist. Mr. Rubin once wrote, “Real dishes
break. That’s how you know they’re real.”
He might have been referencing his struggle
with AIDS that ended in 1994. But not be-
fore he also wrote this: “I don’t want to be
the one who says that life is beautiful. I want
to be the one who feels it.”
