Opinion: Is death so surprising?

2016 was the year of celebrity deaths. Prince, David Bowie and more recently George Michael. Photo/AP

Former BBC DJ Andy Kershaw is down the bottom of the garden eating worms, on the receiving end of the fury of George Michael fans who took umbrage to his tweet after the death of the popstar: "Here we go, again ... brace yourselves for the now routine hysterical over-reaction."

Fans have a point in that it is not up to someone to tell them how to grieve. But is it real grief if your only connection to the popstar was that he was the first poster on your bedroom wall?

My Facebook feed is full of people berating the year 2016 for taking so many people.

Is it really so surprising that people die, particularly when they are old or ill? The year is no different to any other year.

Acknowledging a famous musician's cultural contribution is natural when they die. Music, like all art has the power to connect with humans at complex levels.

Perhaps the outpouring of grief on the death of a musician is connected to one's own memories, and a collective recognition that we are on a one-way journey - as David Bowie - one of the mourned lost ones of 2016 - sang in the song My Death: "My death waits like a Bible truth, At the funeral of my youth, Weep loud for that and the passing time."

While the deaths of many celebrities this year are sad for fans, the simple truth is that they couldn't live forever and their deaths were unlikely preventable.

I wonder where the outpouring of tears and the Facebook posts are about preventable deaths.

Like the 4000 women around the world who die each year in domestic violence incidents.

Anna Whyte reported Thursday that Tauranga Women's Refuge received more than 1500 crisis calls in just two months - a number it would usually receive in a year. Women are turning up at the refuge black and blue.

Domestic violence rarely gets the headlines - it's a crime of silence which allows perpetrators to continue.

Celebrity mourning is easy but, as George Michael would say, you're kissing a fool.

It would be good if people channelled their online empathy with dead celebrities to the lives of thousands of women who are regularly beaten black and blue, and the refuges that save them despite limited funding.