By Tay Yek Keak

THERE'S an old Hollywood superstition that says celebrity deaths come in threes. And, last week, that certainly proved to be true.

First, there was the death of Ed McMahon (former Tonight Show sidekick and famous announcer) last Tuesday at age 86.

Then, Farrah Fawcett, the quintessential 1970s girl, died of cancer last Thursday morning. She was 62.

But the big shock was, of course, the death of Michael Jackson, just hours following Fawcett's last Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles. He was 50.

That death, for better or worse, eclipsed all the others.

Perhaps, like me, and like millions of fans across the globe, you've felt this: In the days following Jackson's death, it still feels surreal and unimaginable that such a figure would be struck down.

I was surprised by the deep sense of loss that came over me, as if something inside my own spirit had died too.

Like everybody, I've had my Michael Jackson moments. For instance, the thrill of the moonwalk (I'd be damned if after 20-over years, I've figured out how to do it). I also hopped about like a rabid monkey to Thriller during my campus days.

Now, every song I've loved by Jackson is playing in my head.

I remember exactly where I was in 2003 when someone told me Leslie Cheung had died. I was at the food court at Plaza Singapura.

John Lennon was shot in 1980, while I was in my bedroom, blithely reading an X-Men comic book.

The Grim Reaper was a cruel, canny manipulator last week, collecting in quick succession icons of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in McMahon, Fawcett, and the Biggest Of The Big Ones, MJ. It felt like a terrible parade.

But it's not just the loss of life that strikes you, because life, as we all know, inevitably ends.

Nor is it the suddenness of the incidents, even though we knew McMahon was getting old and Fawcett, who had been in the news for the worsening of her cancer, was going to bite the dust sooner or later.

We knew, too, that Jackson wasn't entirely a well person, even though we didn't know that he was to meet his end by cardiac arrest (brought on by a Demerol injection, as his family now says).

It's more that the memories connected via those celebrities to my own life have died, too.

It's funny how celebrities can help define us, step by step, on our private evolutionary paths.

We have to make space in our lives for moments delineated by people so famous and so distant that, in a metaphysical sense, we actually exist for their amusement, instead of the other way round.

As a kid, I read about funnyman McMahon. As a teenage horndog, I ogled the golden- haired Angel, Fawcett.

As a man, I was, and still am, tapping my feelings, my emotions, my being, to the beat of Beat It, Billie Jean and so many of Jackson's incredible tunes.

It may be said that things live on in memory. But how long does memory last once the trails that led to them have disappeared?

People have been saying that the music has died along with Jackson. To me, those moments - they've gone, too.

Rest in peace, my icons.

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