Terrific news accompanies my morning coffee.
Naya Rivera’s body has been found.
Surfaced 5 days after she went swimming in Lake Piru during a boating outing with her young son, who is with family.
Recovery is cause to rejoice!
First and essentially, for her family, their grieving, processing and healing. Unknowns of a Person Missing hang like a daunting pendulum. Body recovered, they can now move forward in their journey.
Second, it puts the brakes on Twitter insanities. From tweeters’ convictions that she was taken by human traffickers to killed by her ex-husband to abducted by aliens from a hovering UFO.
Actually no one suggested an alien grab but why not! As likely as every asinine absurdity!
Now, predictably, Twitter tides turn to condolences.
Outpourings of simple RIPs to full-force gushings from complete strangers. Some of these people may never get out of bed again, so profound and life-arresting is their grief.
I confess that I’ve never understood that intersection of celebrity and wild crazed-eye public.
One need only scan Kylie Jenner’s social media — scanning being the best method for all things Kardashian — for a sample of people who verily worship the ground she walks on, want to be her and would lay their lives down for her. It’s nuts.
So, Rivera, 33 years old, “Glee actress” and mother to a 4-year-old boy, is recovered. It’s good.
I VERY RARELY toot my own horn. This occasion requires I raise brass.
In this case, I was right in my assessments. Right at every turn and step since her sudden disappearance 5 days ago.
Only statement I refrained from is that her body would be found. It could’ve gone two ways.
Lake Piru is large and its bed is extraordinarily thick with entanglements. Waters are murky with visibility of 1-2 feet.
“It’s like reading Braille,” said one diver negotiating entanglements.
“The water will give it up or it won’t,” I told a tweeter yesterday.
Today, in a seeming act of mercy, the water did.
Whether the water would or would not ultimately, I never wavered from the certainty she had drowned — irrespective of social media’s massive and often nasty opinions to the contrary.
In 4 days submerged on Twitter engaging with hundreds of people, the 3 conversations / debates most memorable are:
- She was killed by her ex husband
- She was abducted by human traffickers
- Lakes don’t have currents (that dude was defiantly stubborn, unmoving in his “fact”)
Only 24 hours ago I blogged how I wanted her body to surface for the family and to end the shit storm of conspiracy theories and putrid poppycock engulfing Twitter.
Praise the water.
Bless all rescue teams. From land to air to water, they employed massive resources and toiled hard, long, vigorously and intelligently.
And they did so amid a public throwing them SHIT and criticisms like enraged monkeys pitching 100-mph fast balls.
I’m ashamed of my fellow human beings. Hardly first time I’ve said that.
Anyway. Life flows on.
Water took Naya River’s life because she chose not to wear a life vest in a lake. Such a difference that seemingly simple choice made.
Upon a lake with a precedence of drownings for visitors deceived by a calm surface and ignorant or denying of undercurrents.
What’s Naya Rivera thinking from the other side, I’ve wondered.
Can’t know, who can.
But from what I’ve learned of her this past week, I’d reckon it’d sound something like I made a mistake. I should’ve worn the vest. I didn’t and because I didn’t I’ve brought so much grief and loss to the family I love.
Rest in peace, Naya Rivera.
Allelujah, Arizona! 