patrick swayze, addictions and other stuff

i didn't post when michael jackson died.
but this morning, when i read that patrick swayze had passed away, i did want to blog a bit.

i liked and respected patrick swayze.

here's why:

1) he was married to the same woman for 34 years
2) even when his career was white hot, he managed to stay out of the press and live a discreet life.

whoopi goldberg, who seems content to call a spade a spade, only ever praised patrick swayze. some celebs only start "speaking nice" when a fellow celeb starts getting column inches, or gets sick. but throughout her career whoopi always maintained that patrick was a gentleman and a nice fellow and a great person. those seem like rather bland descriptions and shouldn't we be focusing on his acting, but those are such sterling qualities i think we should pause on them. it's easy to find something nasty to say about someone, whether you have to dig back to high school to find those people...but no one came out of the woodwork with a tale that "stuck" about patrick swayze.

in recent months, as swayze was photographed looking increasingly thinner and as he admitted to barbara walters in 2009 that realistically, two years was the best he could hope for, he was also occasionally photographed smoking. and criticised for it. how could a man with cancer smoke. doesn't he know what he is doing to himself?

do you think that if patrick swayze could have stopped smoking he would have? i do. but i know addictions. i have loved ones with addictions and the logic..."this is bad for me...this is speeding up my mortality" isn't enough to get you to simply flick away the cigarette, walk away from the needle, whatever your vice may be. seeing swayze with that smoke reminded me how human he really was.

and like all humans, he needed love. unlike all humans, he was lucky enough to find it. 34 years of marriage, by all accounts a happy one, to one woman - lisa niemi. cancer is a sad way for a life to end, but i would say patrick swayze, with his reputation for kindness and integrity, the love that he experienced while here on earth, the successful career that he enjoyed in hollywood and the peaceful ranching life he enjoyed away from it, was a blessed man. and he knew it. go in peace.

Comments

[Charmaine Graham]

Tess, sometimes your perspective on others lives leaves me in awe and gratitude. What a wonderful blog. Thank you for approaching his life with grace and accepting him as human. I, for one am sad he is gone. My mother, well she is devastated!

[Boulder]

You know, my take on the cigs was that he knew he was terminal and that in the end, the time that he'd gain back from stopping smoking wasn't time that would have been "well spent" given how sick pancreatic cancer can be in the end. Also, that it may have felt better to have the comfort of the familiar smoke to a man who didn't know what was coming in the days and nights before him.

That reasoning is from a person who is emphatically anti-smoking. Pathalogically so, in fact.