No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away
I had the honor of meeting Sir Terry at the North American Discworld Convention in 2009, when it was in Tempe. He had hundreds of adoring fans vying for his attention, and he took the time to hear another one stutter out that he was an inspiration, a favorite author, a life-saver, a huge influence on my own work, etc etc etc. Stuff I’m sure he’s heard more times than anyone can count, but stuff that I meant. He was gracious and kind and I still remember him telling me in his light, nasal voice how much he loved Mark Twain.
I thought of him as an optimist, but never a blind one - Neil Gaiman addressed this in an article last year. He seemed like a fundamentally good person, and a fundamentally understanding person, whose loathing was reserved only for those who do harm to others. And he handled his diagnosis with humbling grace and dignity. I’m sure he was furious and raging against the unfairness of it all, terrified, depressed. A lack of those emotions is not what I mean by grace and dignity-by that I mean he lived every year of his life to the fullest, kept producing as long as he could, refused to let the disease kill him before it killed him. I hope we get to see the fifth Tiffany Aching book and the rest of the Science of Discworld books; the world is poorer for losing his stories, and I wish more had been transferred out of the fraying brain matter. He discussed his terminal illness with rare aplomb and good humor and frankness, and was a fervent advocate for assisted suicide, a topic nobody wants to meditate on but one desperately needing discussion. If you want to be utterly humbled and numb for a while watch his “Choosing to Die” documentary.
An author’s work is a part of that author’s soul, even if it is an edited and performed piece of the soul. I don’t presume I knew the “real” Terry Pratchett through his writing alone, but the glimpses I saw of him in Vimes’ anger, Granny’s cynicism, Death’s circumspection, Vetinari’s ruthless pragmatism, were stunning. I don’t see a man who has fused with his characters-we write about people we are not at all like, after all-but a man who understands them and appreciates them for who they are, and who can get into their thought processes without embellishment and the strawman oversimplification people indulge in when speculating on the motives of people unlike themselves. And I see a man raging at injustice and hypocrisy, in his own dry, understated way, and a man with wisdom and insight a fraction of the depth of which I can only hope to accumulate in my lifetime.
Thank you for everything, Terry. You’re the wittiest wordsmith I ever did read, master of the indefinitely quotable, the turn of phrase, the pun, the wordplay, the most exquisite dance of ruthless satire and reverence for humanity, and just one hell of a storyteller. Your books made me a better writer, and brought me immeasurable pleasure, and of maybe secondary importance but of great value to me, they made me a better person.
Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.