Cory Montieth

Three months ago, I read on the news that Cory Monteith had been found dead in a hotel room in a city an hour from my house. I was surprised, but in the end, it really didn't make a difference in my life whether he was dead or alive. I don't even watch Glee, though my mom does.

For the next week or two, the headlines on Google News were all about Cory Monteith, and Lea Michelle. There were stories about what he'd been doing that night, about his childhood, about Lea Michelle, and how she was coping, and sooner or later, articles about what Glee would do without him. The spotlight stayed on him until Kate Middleton went into labor several weeks later.

He is not the only celebrity to have died in the past few months. E.L. Konigsburg, Tom Clancy, and Seamus Heaney all died this year as well. For me, all these deaths were sad, but not so immediate, not so sensationalized.

So why all the attention? Why do we care so much?

Because Cory Monteith was 31 years old when he died, and because he is immortalized in Glee as a high school student. For me, his death was a shock for a few reasons. One was because I knew who he was. I have several episodes of Glee, and many other videos and clips from it.

The other reason is because he was so young. It was one of the first times when I felt like a celebrity who I know of well died who was around my age. It is true that he is sixteen years older then me (almost exactly, I looked up his age and saw that his birthday is the day before mine), and so not really all that close in age. But, he is in the generation that gets pushed together with mine. According to TIME magazine, the Millennials are the generation stretching from 1980 to 2000. I managed to just make it in with a few years to spare.

I think what is really is for me is that he was part of a group of celebrities that became famous in my memory. He is not one of the many actors and actresses who have been famous for longer then I can remember, probably longer then I have been alive. While I didn't regularly watch Cory Monteith in anything, or really even care about him that much, he is part of a phenomenon that came to be in my memory.

Today, when I watched a short clip of last night's memorial episode of Glee, it reminded me of this, and made my think about why I was so surprised. It was because he was young, and it was also because he was never able to defeat his demons. We all have our issues, some of us have worse ones then others, and his killed him in the end. It's hard to realize that our choices may come back to haunt us, and that there are some choices that are nearly impossible to unmake.


Sorry if this post was a bit random. I have been meaning to write a more organized version of this since July, but never got around to it. I'll probably put up another post today, this week's Homeschool Friday post, so look for that this afternoon or evening.