On Our Heroes Dying

1931-2015
1931-2015

The entire geek portion of the Internet was united recently by the death of Leonard Nimoy.  It was enough to get a lot of stupid talk about a dress off my Facebook feed, so even if it wasn’t enough Nimoy was one of the people who led me to science fiction, he has my gratitude for that one final favor.

And while I am a little saddened by the death of a man who I honestly never met, I am also not as shocked as I was by some past deaths.  Nimoy’s health has been rather bad for a while now.  There’s a reason even when he did some acting work, that it was done to keep his actual appearance to a bare minimum.    But there’s something else to consider:  Nimoy was 83 years old.  As timeless as performances captured on camera can be, Spock got old, and he died.  He wasn’t the first, he won’t be the last, and its something we will all do ourselves.  What do we do when people we have never met, but have touched us in some way as we became the adults we are, die?

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