From Warnie to Olivia Newton-John, 2022 has been a year of real tears

Seven weeks after her death, I am still playing Olivia Newton-John in the car. This is not something that I did while she was alive. And I have never properly watched Grease. So what the hell is wrong with me?

Turns out, nothing, a psychiatrist friend reassured me. But there is no doubt that 2022 has turned into a year of tears: we lost the spin bowler we grew up with, our trusted Play School uncle and our monarch.

Seven weeks since her death and I’m still playing Olivia Newton-John in my car.Credit: Peter Morris/SMH

And many more. Apart from Shane Warne, John Hamblin and Queen Elizabeth II, other notable deaths this year include Sidney Poitier, Judith Durham, Jean-Luc Godard, Archie Roach, Mikhail Gorbachev, Uncle Jack Charles, Issey Miyake, Ivana Trump, Andrew Symonds and Caroline Jones.

We haven’t had a year like it since 2016, when Muhammed Ali, Prince, George Michael, David Bowie, Carrie Fisher, Nancy Reagan and Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej died.

Some affected me more than others. No doubt it was the same for you. Ball of the century aside, I hadn’t revered the life of Warne, but in his death came to a new appreciation of his talent and his character and was moved when I attended his memorial service at the MCG.

We haven’t had a year of so many celebrity deaths since 2016, when David Bowie, among others, died.Credit: AP

I thought the coverage of the death of 1980s Soviet leader Gorbachev was undercooked for a man who really did change the world. Yes, I know our view of those who have passed is sometimes overly rose-tinted. No offence, but I did draw the line at mourning the loss of Anne Heche.

I phoned my friend,the psychiatrist, to talk me through it. “No, there’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, not wanting to be named. “These people all had some significance in your life. It is really not different to losing someone close to us.”

When people who were a certainty in our lives are suddenly gone, we can be at a loss to process that.

“The Queen is an excellent example of that,” he said. “She has been the one constant of our lives, no matter what our attitude to the monarchy. Compounded with other deaths, that can all seem a little bit overwhelming.”

The death of Queen Elizabeth has had an impact because she was a constant in our lives.Credit: Getty

We are only human, and it is natural for us to just try to make sense out of our experiences. A rapid succession of deaths can lead us to believe there is something going on in the universe. “There isn’t necessarily anything to be read into it, but we humans beings, we try to do that so we can form some kind of logic.”

But the passing of ONJ did catch me by surprise. I can recommend If You Love Me (Let Me Know) and Making A Good Thing Better as gems from her back catalogue that are still on my mixtape.

And if you search online, you can view astonishing rehearsal footage of ONJ’s 1978 American TV special, just before Grease sent her into the celebrity stratosphere. Doe-eyed, she exhibited all the qualities that made her a superstar – and her back-up singers were no less than ABBA and Andy Gibb.

As humans, we have an innate propensity to try to do something in reaction to what is going on around us. Hence, our rituals when we come together to mourn loss. There is comfort and shared humanity when we acknowledge this. Whether that be the queue to see the Queen lying in state, or the 3.48 million people who tuned in to her funeral last Monday night. Or even my Facebook friends who commented about that ONJ television special.

Grief is personal. I couldn’t understand the attempts of social media peanut gallery pundits to police coverage of the Queen’s death by coining the phrase “mourn porn” in reference to what they regarded as excessive news coverage of her death. Change the channel if it was too much for you.

We live in a turbulent world. Tectonic plates continually move beneath us, as we shift our feet and attempt to set our stance against increasing uncertainty.

I have never questioned my own mortality … but I do worry about those around me.

When a close friend’s father died in 2013, I found myself sourcing a suitably funereal tie and wondering if the one I chose would be the tie I would wear to my own father’s funeral. It was.

My friend had a piece of advice: “When a parent dies, you learn so much about them. Things you didn’t know, or had forgotten about. It is like meeting them all over again.”

It might seem like scant consolation, but in times of grief we take what we can get.