Oh, I’m not trying to be morbid.

I just got to thinking recently.  There are a lot of people who probably die rather often.

I don’t mean a real, physical death… oh, let me explain:

One day, not terribly long ago, I started reading “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.  I devowered the first book, and two through 5 didn’t last long either.  After that, our library didn’t seem to have any other books by him.  I thought to myself, “This Douglas Adams chap, he’s really, really good.  When he decides to pull out his A-Game there’s no stopping him.  He has to have other works kicking around”  So, I wanted to hunt for those.  I also wanted to know when the next Hitchhiker’s book was going to come out.  I was so very, very excited about this writer that I had discovered (for, it felt like I was the only one who knew about him, it seemed like I was on the cutting edge of this sci-fi-humor book writer’s career).

I was psyched about this man.  Here was a man who took all that I found sort of funny in the back of my head, put it on the page, and made it genius.  The way he wrote, the comparisons he used, every single LINE of the first Hitchhikers book is funny - and if the line doesn’t seem funny when you first read it, he makes reference to it and MAKES it funny.

THIS is a man that I would go to a convention to meet, just so I could put my sweaty hand in his, pump it up and down a few times, and babble incoherently to him.

So, on to Google I hopped, for all the answers I could ever wish for, and I found his bibliography.   Complete with the date of his death.

Dead!  Gone!  Age of 49, in 2001, he died suddenly of a heart attack.  Now, this was probably a good two years before I ever even read the book, but so far as I cared he had just died THAT DAY.

And what was there for me?  There was no one else mourning him; there was no one to commiserate with; there were going to be no eulogies, no one was going to be talking about how great he was at the watercooler.

A man who I looked up to had died, and I was the only one who cared.

It’s a rather interesting situation, that.  I can’t be the only one who’s ever had that happen to them.  Someone else must’ve picked up a book, saw a movie, or heard an album that they thought was amazing, that really struck a chord with them, and then they found out that the person was dead.  As far as they’re concerned though, that person JUST DIED.

So, I wonder - how many times has Douglas Adams died?  How many times has any great person died?