Editor's note for the week

I stopped crying after my mom died. The tears just dried up and have gathered up around my stomach area.  But I have started crying again. The reason I reveal at end of this piece.

My husband however cried bitter tears when I woke him up on Wednesday night with the news that Andrew Fletcher from Depeche Mode has died. I knew the news that late at night, as I am an insomniac and phone addict. He was sleeping comfortably. But I had to wake him. The tears just rolled down his cheeks as if this man was his brother.

I had a whole week or two of violent crying when David Bowie died. My dad just shook his head. Totally confused.

I recently did a Mother’s day gift guide which involved 500 emails at least, started two more businesses, got a new marketing director on board, and dealt with 6 close friends divorcing. One friend’s wife left him for a close friend’s husband. And I am now blocked from one of the friends, because where there is divorce there is drama. So, I have been busy. But do not for a minute think that I have missed a single thing happening in the Johnny Depp trial. What I missed in the day, I caught up at night in bed, plus I added extra hours with the million Johnny TikTok posts. I can write a complete assessment on the trail and can even tell you the staff member from TMZ wore a black suit and black nail varnish to the court case.

It is madness right? I see my Facebook friends scoff at the obsession with the Depp trial and that we saw nothing nor took nary an interest in the Ghislaine Maxwell court case.

But I can tell you why.

We are emotionally invested in Depeche Mode. It is not the man that died, but we are crying for the moments in our lives that the music played and got us through tough times. My one friend says all she listened to when she got divorced is Depeche Mode. That is a lot of emotional investment right there.

My husband cried, cos he grew up in a Hicksville small town, where kids in his school did not know Depeche Mode. His father told him it is music from Satan, and the whole town thought he was crazy. He got in his first car and drove to Johannesburg to see the band perform live. It was his first experience with the universe opening up and showing him there is a life other than the empty streets of a coal mining town where he got beat up so badly he lost his teeth. Because he was different.

I was at a strange time of my life when Edward Scissorhands came out. I completely and utterly saw myself in Depp’s character. A strange person who meant well but no one understood.

Movies and music touches us in the very dark caves of our souls. More importantly, it makes us feel we are not alone. We are not as strange as we think. There are others who are also strange. That is a bond like a clenched deal. Signed and sealed.

We remember where we were when certain songs played. I remember seeing Chocolat with my mom, and I was fasting (the continuous diet hamster wheel I was on) and craving chocolate so badly after the movie. My mom was in heaven with that movie, it ticked all her boxes of what she wanted from life. To live in a small French town and have a little shop. To eat chocolate. It was heavenly. It was our version of heaven. And Johnny was hotter than the hot chocolate.

So when Johnny goes to court, my heart is there with him. If he doodles, I smile. If he smiles at funny moment, I laugh. A mega pint will be ingrained in my memory forever. That trail is already won for Depp no matter the outcome. Each TikTok video of him that is made gets hundred thousand likes. The public has spoken. He is our man. He has been in our family since Jump Street. We have laughed with him, cried with him and worried about him like he is family.

My husband is crying, cos the band he so loved will be no more. There were only three members, now two. It is the end. But what he is really crying for is a lost 17 year old in a small town where he is out of place.

So Johnny has won, no matter the outcome, and Depeche Mode is now a heart sore. A man died at 60. It is too young. Our emotions are triggered. Not about the actual people, but for ourselves.

I drove my mom mad with Depeche Mode, I had a VHS that I played over and over with the first Depeche video on it. I can still see her rolling her eyes, how a child can listen to one song so many times?

And this past few weeks, I have started crying for the first time in five years. I lost my dad to covid - he was the first person in our province to die. I shut down emotionally as he was so healthy and it happened so fast. Then it was one death after the next. My eyes were dry, and I have become emotionally blunt.

But these days I go onto TikTok and cry my eyes out, late at night or when I am alone. My son created a TikTok account for his trucking business he started this year. This is a child that since before he could walk, played with trucks. He played in the sand pit from the first rays of light till the last. Winter and summer. He only had truck toys. We read truck books at night. I bought his truck magazines before he could read. He did not finish university-said there was nothing they could teach him about the business he was going in. I just shrugged. He is an incredible artist, he made me a collection of the most beautiful truck drawings as a child. He worked for various trucking companies, and I used to laugh when he told me he would walk into clubs and bars in his trucking gear and how girls would pull up their noses at him. Ha! Someone is having the last laugh.

When he collected his own truck, and bought it to our property, the flood gates of tears just opened, and have not shut down. Two weeks ago, he bought his second truck. More tears.

I must add here, for context, this child and I spent a lot of time in hospital - he nearly died in an ambulance, he was in ICU so many times I lost count. His asthma was so bad, his paediatrician knew him so well. I had to spend each night with him, he refused to stay there alone. We had a lot of time to chat about his dreams. On his twelfth birthday he was in hospital, missing out on a helicopter flip with his friend. That day he said, mom, a hospital will never see me again. And it has not. This little frail boy with the long blonde curls, now is this tough guy that works 20 hour days, changing massive wheels alone at night in the rain and snow (yes it snows on his routes sometimes).

Now I cry, I watch his TikToks and cry and cry. Also, as my dad was his real father figure, and missed seeing this. Now I cry.

So we cry, we support. We cry when happy. We cry when there is loss. We cannot stop people from having emotions about celebrities, because they mean a moment and phase in our lives.

(PS About Epstein and Ghislaine, no we do not care, it makes us feel ill. Nauseated. That is why we turn away.)

And that was the week. Have a good weekend.