He is dead.
When I first heard the news a chill ran through my belly. It was a shock, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. How terrible, I thought, how awful and sad. I could see the wave run through the people around me, a sense of loss, a feeling that we had all lost someone close to us. In some ways we did know him. We do know them; we know their names, their history, we learn of their pasts, their failures, their triumphs. We see them achieve things we could never hope to, possessed of extraordinary beauty and abilities, surrounded by wealth, living the dream.
He was just a man.
Is it a tragedy? To say that he died before his time is to deny fate, to embrace chance. Maybe this was planned for him all along, as much a part of him as his smile, or his laugh, as intrinsic as his heart beat, as necessary as his peculiar way of showing disdain.
He has become more than a man.
In some ways I'm jealous. Yeah, I know, that sounds so....selfish. To be jealous of a dead man, to envy one who has nothing. Why? He has become crystallised in time. This, this is how idols are born, myths created in the void of their passing. He can do no wrong, besmirch his legacy no longer. His flaws will fade as time passes, his success magnified, good looks crystallised by his demise. As I continue to make mistakes, disappoint the ones I love, try and fail and wither then die - he will remain, halo glowing and forever young.
