One of the few celebrities I knew and cared about because I grew up watching Charmed, still one of my favourite shows to this day, before I stopped watching TV. Shannen died on 13th July of cancer.
And all I can think is… man, she was kind of a piece of work. She had been battling cancer for almost a decade on and off and I suppose had a long time to grapple with her mortality and come to terms with it. And in the end, it seems like what she chose was pettiness and bitterness.
She had a “long” list of people who weren’t invited to her funeral, because they wouldn’t be coming for “the right reasons.” She reignited a feud in the Charmed community with Alyssa Milano, using her cancer as the reason she had to “get the truth out” about a television show 25 years after the fact. She finalised her divorce with her husband one day before her death, presumably to prevent him from inheriting anything. The last one is contentious because who knows what was happening behind closed doors but still, that’s definitely one last ‘fuck you.’
It makes me sad that she was filled with so much hate and bitterness that even in her dying moments, she only chose to amplify the bad than forgive and make peace. I’m not at all religious but I think it’s a very human thing to want to seek peace and reconciliation in the end, before you can’t anymore, and I was a little stunned to see her choice be to go out in a blaze of bitterness.
That’s it. There’s not really any point to this. I was just stunned. I never knew her and don’t have any right to judge her, and I’m not, really, deep down. It’s just something that made me a little sad and that I don’t really understand. People sure are strange.