Husband and I, sharing sorrowfully thoughts about the death of Robin Williams this week, considered the sad but inevitable truth that, as one ages the loss of long-appreciated, loved at a distance, fellow-travellers who've been with us for much of our adult life, is going to be a fact of elder life. Increasing numbers will leave us, some much too tragically soon, others at a time more to be expected.
In the last few weeks and months we've lost Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Garner, Tony Benn, and now Robin Williams, then in news quickly following, Lauren Bacall, among many others less known to us by their work. These, especially for us (or for me in the case of Tony Benn) leave gaps nobody else is likely to fill, even for us, let alone for their families whose loss is tremendous. We're simply minute parts, tiny part-pixels of the lost ones' vast international audiences.
Our antidote to these losses, if there is one, as well as keeping their work and attainments handy for re-viewing, re-considering, re-reading, has to be a cultivation of new favourites, new "heroes" who, though never filling the shoes of those gone before, will offer new and different talents, and perhaps different perspectives.
As the kaleidoscope of life shakes a little, the view changes.
"And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone."
― Terry Pratchett, "Wintersmith".
