Reading over “the lives they lived”—notable deaths of 2023, I still can’t believe Sinead O’Connor is dead.

Her voice, and the emotional impact of it, may be buried beneath 3 decades of other memories, now, but it nevered gathered dust. Her bravery—shockingly over the line of comfort and onto the chopping block long before it was cool or safe to say such—has an edge to it that’s still as sharp as it was when she stood up for the Irish people, or children against the Catholic Church’s abuses and coverups of the same.

She, like many famous people—

…perhaps like the famous old family I was close to in high school, when I first heard Sinead—I remember hearing her lonely powerful voice soar on the yellow bus as we rolled out of St. Johnsbury on our way to Quebec City, where I first fell in love…

—seemed to be a magnet for tragedy, for taking on the world and being beaten by it. And yet, in the end, she left her virtuous mark, and we remember her, and the cynical world is less cynical and shadowy because of her will to use her one short precious life to be of benefit.