Thoughts on the Death of Amy Winehouse

I feel compelled to write at least a short note on Amy Winehouse, a young woman who was found dead in her London apartment a few days ago. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but the truth is I was never a big fan of her music. I wasn’t fond of her highly-stylized hair or her weirdly-curved eyebrows.

Once, when I was 17, a friend told me he always tries to see the good in people, no matter how much they behaved disagreeably. Ever since he said that, it’s stuck. Today his words come through, in contemplating Amy Winehouse’s personality and short life.

I like her for her willfulness, even though it was so destructive.

Not a good medical lesson, for sure – or the message most people are telling their kids upon this “teaching moment,” but not everything I care for is just how it should be.

Yes, she should have gotten more help for her addictions. She needed it, that’s obvious. Family and friends, take note!… You can intervene and make a difference in a troubled person’s life.

But sometimes this happens in medicine, when you’re caring for a patient who smokes or drinks or smokes and drinks or does something else unhealthy, or in a family, or among friends – it’s not always so helpful to simply criticize and judge or lecture and point the person to the door.

So here’s another take: to identify something good in the person, and focus on that, and remember that.

—-

Related Posts:

• Old and New Music, on Dying to Give Birth
• Reading and Hearing ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’
• Another Take on Not Smoking, the Law and Tolerance
• On Sheryl Crow’s Report that She Has a Meningioma, and Singing Loud
• Blood and Hip Surgery: New Study Supports Fewer Transfusions