Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper and ???: Do Celebrities Really Die in Threes?

Celebrities Gary ColemanGary Coleman and Dennis HopperDennis Hopper both have died within the past couple of days. Does that perhaps portend that yet one more famous individual will also die very soon?

Some no doubt think so. Such individuals might point to the relatively recent deaths of Ed McMahonEd McMahon, Michael Jackson and FarrahFarrah Fawcett for an example. Each of those individuals did in fact die with days of each other.

And there are also many other examples as well which we could use. In fact, at first there appears to be so many similar examples that one would almost swear that there must indeed be something very strange going on.

But is there really? Could it be that we are simply made more aware of death when someone of note passes? Do these somewhat morbid reminders of our own mortality force us to seek more predictability and order in an otherwise chaotic world?

Are we thereby made to confront the certainty of our own death? And regarding the question of celebrity itself: who is to say, after all, who might qualify for such status?

This apparent phenomenon has nevertheless been studied by both amateurs and professionals alike over the years. Numerologists sometimes point to what they claim are other supposedly meaningful sets of triplets.

The holy trinity. The day itself in the form of morning, noon and night. Even the much larger concept of time itself where we recognize the past, present and future.

Still others, however, might term such speculation as patently outrageous. People who take this particular stance often rightly cite statistics which say even larger numbers of relative celebrities die each and every day.

They might point out that we tend to conveniently limit the count of all of these deaths to just three, and that we then ignore anyone else of note that might happen to die at or around the same time as others.

In any event, it may be well to remember that all numbers and systems of numbers as well as the measurement and expression of dates and time itself are each little more than man-made constructs which are capable of lending at least some level of convenience, credibility and order to what we largely accept and embrace as physical reality.

Perhaps what draws us in and holds our fascination about threes then involves simply the stark certainty of our own death and our fascination with it. Possibly it is that passing into what can only truly be termed an unknown realm; into what we can but feebly attempt to refer to as a kind of different dimension or perhaps even a different expression of being.

It is a place, we might say with some confidence, but this could be only because we have no better word or expression at our disposal that we can use to describe that which cannot involve numbers or time or even life as we know it; because nothing can any longer be measured by using terms of physically measurable or quantifiable expressions whenever death enters the picture.

And so from a logical perspective, “threes”, or “thirteens” or even “thirties” or any other number which we might choose for speculative purposes would not appear to hold anything unusual or strange whenever numbers are being considered along with any individual’s passing, be they celebrity or otherwise.

Because when someone passes from this life all numerical concepts and those earthly associations with those individuals who have passed then become inextricably locked within the vastly deeper mysteries of what we call life and death.

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