Why Chester Bennington’s Death Was So Unexpectedly Devastating

It must have been late junior year of high school, when I was in a Girl Scout meeting and we were talking about new music. One of the girls said her new favorite band was called Linkin Park — “spelled without the ‘g’; not ‘linking park’.” I absorbed the information, but really had no way of finding their music. I had a 3 song rule: You don’t buy a CD unless you like 3 songs on it. Tried and true.
At some point in senior year (2001–2002), I was listening to the radio in my first car, my ’99 green Honda Civic. I heard the intro to “In The End” — that sticky intro piano melody. At the time, no one was using piano/real instruments in music and I was in love. I had to hear the whole thing. When I did, the lyrics spoke louder than the piano, “I tried so hard and got so farrr but in the end, it doesn’t even matterrr”. What could a straight-A brown girl from white suburbia possibly relate to in this song? AP F*ing Calculus. I was generally a straight A student except for math, and this year Calculus was kicking my butt. I had a D the first semester and an F the 2nd semester. I had never failed anything, ever. It was annoying, frustrating, and heartbreaking. But Linkin Park and the guy yelling this song, understood my pain. He got it; and I was hooked.
Over the years, Linkin Park became my go-to artist whenever I felt helpless and furious. Countless nights of frustratingly impossible engineering level math. Accumulating cuts from people not understanding me; people expecting me to be something they cooked up in their minds, someone who wasn’t who I truly was. I’m a child of Indian immigrants, and this clash of cultures: 2 opposing forces trying to mold me, each in their own image, is why I found solace in Linkin Park and Chester’s words.
As far as I know, my best girlfriends didn’t have that same affinity to Linkin Park as I did (and if they did, we certainly didn’t talk about it). It’s no secret that my favorite band is the Backstreet Boys, and second place (only because they can’t be first) is Matchbox Twenty. But it wasn’t until Chester passed that I realized Linkin Park was third — and that’s only because they couldn’t be first or second. This love of them is such a juxtaposition to the number 1 spot of Backstreet Boys (BSB), it’s just another peculiarity about me — how can someone equally love both of these types of music? It’s not something you gush about with your BSB loving friends.
I’ve spent some time thinking about why this particular celebrity death is hitting me so hard, when no other has. I’m not one who follows celebrity life that much (other than BSB- and even then, it’s only when I find the time). Chester and Linkin Park were not on the forefront of my mind on a daily basis. Then why on earth is this loss so devastating?
I’m starting to understand that it’s because they were my safety net on standby, waiting to rescue me from whatever tailspin I was in. I could pop my headphones in and drown out the real world as I freefell into that net of symphonies of instruments, new sounds, melodies, and raging singing. In the words of Matchbox Twenty, “one sweet song is just enough to clear my head”. I listened to the songs and they healed me. I had the courage to keep trying. Another fan called it her own brand of therapy, and that’s precisely it.
When no one understood what you were going though, not your parents, not your best friends, Chester did. When we were inconsolably alone we let him into our rooms, our ears, our minds, and thereby our souls. He was the best friend we never had, in an unfortunate one-sided relationship. We lost our only friend who understood what we were going through.
This is the reason people from around the world mourn and continue to mourn the death of someone they didn’t even know personally. Chester touched our souls in a way that most artists only dream of. And in a tragic irony, the one who usually makes us feel better is the one now causing the pain.
After loving Hybrid Theory & Meteora, I followed Linkin Park through Minutes to Midnight, A Thousand Suns, and even Living Things. Along the way, my friend got me hooked on Reanimation, which is ah-mAzing! I appreciated the evolution and progression because as I grew more confident in who I was, making my way in the world, I didn’t need the harsher sound as often. The Hunting Party was a little too loud for my taste at the time and I never really explored it. In a bizarre twist of events, I actually started listening to their new album, One More Light, for the first time on the morning (EST) of Thursday, July 20th, 2017. I had to pause it just before the title track, in order to participate in some work meetings. Around 3PM, my friend texted me a single hyperlink that had the title in it “chester-bennington-of-linkin-park-commits-suicide”. I read it in disbelief and my immediate response to him was, “What the fccck”. It was freaking unbelievable and exasperating. It was a fleeting moment of ‘how dare you?’. My friend and I had just been texting the night before and I told him I planned to listen to the album the next day (7/20). Turns out we had both separately been thinking we might go to the concert (for the first time) this time around. Needless to say, after this text I couldn’t finish the album.
For four days the album was paused, frozen in time. Maybe if I didn’t press play, some part of me would just remain in a time when Chester was still alive. On Monday I thought, today. Today I can finish out this new album. I knew “One More Light” was yet to come and that’s the song that everyone had been quoting online. I knew it would be sad. But Oh-My-God. It was brutal. As I started to listen, it just got sadder and sadder. The whole thing is tragic and ironic. I’m listening and crying. I’m ‘angry, and I should be, it’s not fair’. I completely break down and lose it. I needed the cry. I needed to grieve; to feel that ache in my heart that only comes from the unique cocktail of anger, hurt, regret, and loss. Just — all the feelings in his words and the emotion of the song. It’s like he’s singing TO us FOR him. Almost prophetic. It’s as if he wrote this album and particularly this song just for us, just for what we would need when he was gone.
It’s only now that I realize Chester’s songs are so much deeper than the things I went through. Even other people have bigger problems than I did. But it didn’t matter. He was there, in my ears, mending my soul, no matter what I was going though. And that’s the same for so many people. The universality of these songs/lyrics/emotions speak to everyone of all different ages, countries, ethnicities, and family situations. I’ve seen stories from people in Iran’s theocracy, to India’s culture, to Germany, and countless other places where these words and songs resonated cross-culturally. He is someone who changed an entire generation, for the better.
It’s been a week and there continues to be a constant stream on the #RIPChester hashtag. There are new tweets every. single. minute. (and that’s just Twitter). I am in awe at the outpouring of love from hardcore fans, old school fans, celebrities, and everyone in between. People reaching out to one another across the globe to offer some kind of solace. There are many days we doubt the humanity in humanity; but this week was not one of them. If you ever needed proof that there was love in the world, Chester’s death proved it. And it’s exactly what he wanted.
I’ve finally been able to listen to some of the older stuff and it is slowly but surely working its magic. It’s patching me back up, one song at a time. A few songs are sadder now, but mostly the music is doing what it’s always done and, I suspect, will always do. It’ll take some time, but the raw wound will eventually scar up. ‘Every scar is a story I can tell’; and this story is more epic than I ever realized.
Chester was very open about his issues, as longtime fans may have known. He ‘held it all, but was careless to let it fall; and we were by his side, powerless.’ The more I seek to know about him, (which I regret only doing so posthumously) I find that he was a kind soul with a troubled mind. He loved his family, his fans, and his band. I think these are the reasons he survived as long as he did. LP’s statement said it so well, “We’re trying to remind ourselves that the demons who took you away from us were always part of the deal. After all, it was the way you sang about those demons that made everyone fall in love with you in the first place.”
Never more has a “Rest in Peace” wish been so genuine. With everything he battled on earth, we wish him all the Peace in the universe, he has certainly earned it.
