I was eighteen when Isaac Asimov died. The moment that I learned of his death is still very clear in my head: I came home from school, the radio was on, and the newscaster was describing a man whose accomplishments seemed very much like those of Mr. Asimov. I started to feel shaky, and had to pull out a chair at the kitchen table to sit in while I waited for confirmation of what my gut was telling me.
I remember crying, and not being able to stop. I remember my stepfather scoffing at me when he learned who the tears were for. I said, “Didn’t you ever lose a hero?”
He said, “You don’t know what a hero is.”
Asimov was a giant in my life. I was a teenager, a lover of science fiction, and an aspiring writer; every month for years I had read the editorials he published in the magazine that bore his name. You know what this is like, don’t you? You read a person’s words, you internalize his way of thinking and let it colour your own, you greet each new work as if it were a letter from a friend. You rely on the comfort that those words bring. In that moment that you understand that you will never again receive a letter from that friend, you are bereft.
I suppose my stepfather’s view of what a hero is involves self-sacrifice, bravery, the saving of lives. And really, what did Asimov do? He made up stories, that’s all. He told lies for a living.
He also helped me learn how to think. In one of his editorials he wrote, “An intelligent man is never bored.” For the better part of three decades now, I have kept those words close to my heart, and have been resolved to think my way out of boredom. Those few words have been life-changing for me, maybe even life-saving. Not bad for a man who had no inkling of my existence.
It isn’t very often that I really grieve over the death of a celebrity. I will admit that I still can’t listen to David Bowie’s final album without weeping, and I get chills when I see that photograph of Gord Downie saluting the crowd at the last Tragically Hip concert. For the most part, the ending of a celebrity’s existence is only a bump in my own. It’s the ones who have unknowingly thrown me lifelines; they’re the ones I grieve.
So, Asimov was one. Ray Bradbury, who taught me how to dream, was another. And Levon Helm, whose album Electric Dirt touched me so deeply that when I heard he was gone, I felt a deep, keening loss, as if he had been my closest friend.
And now, in the space of less than a week, we have lost Stan Lee and William Goldman. These were the gods of their respective fields, heroes to so many, men who threw out lifelines in the form of comic books, screenplays, and novels. Men who entertained us, but who also gave us safe spaces in which to dream.
I am thankful that all of these men have left us such bodies of work that even though they are gone, we need never feel lonely for their companionship. They left us a lifetime of lifelines.
I don’t know, maybe I’m making too much of these “heroes” and their legacies. It’s not like any of them performed emergency open-heart surgery or anything. Still, am I doing anything with my life to throw a lifeline into a world of people I’ll never meet? Am I heroic?
Are you?
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