When I first heard it I felt sick and frightened,
and I was a little confused by my feelings. Usually when rock stars die
I feel maybe a little sad, but that’s about it. Sometimes I grab
hold of the “how is this worse than thousands dying in some country
I’ve never heard of, as is doubtless happening even as we speak?” ring
and hang onto that for a while; sometimes, as when brain cancer claimed
Chuck Schuldiner, I get a little emotional about it. But usually I am
more moved by such two-line items as one sees in the local paper from
time to time, the ones about some anonymous fellow who stood in the path
of an oncoming train, or whose car flipped into the ditch during a snowstorm,
killing all its passengers instantly. Those stories usually feel somehow
more pertinent to me, and sadder, since one reason we fear death is that
we worry that all our toil and trouble will ultimately have come to nothing.
Those are the stories of what might happen to us if our luck runs out.
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