As the music world mourns the passing of icon David Bowie, his son Duncan Jones, has taken to social media to share a thank you letter from his doctor. Jones originally broke the news of his father’s death on Jan. 10 and told the public that he would be taking some time away from the Internet to grieve. Bowie had an 18-month battle before his death, and in the letter it is implied that he passed peacefully. To share the letter, Jones re-tweeted an original post from the Marie-Curie Organization that shared the essay written by Dr. Mark Taubert, who was Bowie’s palliative care consultant in his final months.

“At the beginning of that week, I had a discussion with a hospital patient facing the end of her life,” Taubert wrote in the letter posted by BMJ Blog. “We discussed your death and your music, and it got us talking about numerous weighty subjects, that are not always straightforward to discuss with someone facing their own demise. In fact, your story became a way for us to communicate very openly about death, something many doctors and nurses struggle to introduce as a topic of conversation.”

Taubert also thanked Bowie for the music he had written over his long-spanning career and cited Bowie’s peaceful death at home as inspiring to anyone facing the end.

He further wrote, “Thank you for ‘Lazarus’ and Blackstar. I am a palliative care doctor, and what you have done in the time surrounding your death has had a profound effect on me and the people I work with. Your album is strewn with references, hints and allusions. As always, you don’t make interpretation all that easy, but perhaps that isn’t the point.”

Many others have come out to honor David Bowie following his death, and one notable celebrity is Elton John, who delivered his own rendition of the iconic 1969 track “Space Oddity” at a recent show in Los Angeles. John performed the song only two days after Bowie’s death so the instrumental take resonated. The famed British singer-songwriter also credited Bowie with inspiring his own career and early music.

See More David Bowie
Join the Discussion