An etherealgirl's Adventures in Cyberland

Sunday, September 21, 2003

Johnny Cash, John Ritter leave us a legacy of music and laughter

One of the saddest things about growing up and getting older is the increasing losses that you encounter - losses of your heroes, icons and contemporaries. I have had a wrestling match with bouts of blue funk off and on all summer long. The losses of Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, David Brinkley, Bob Hope to name only a few - and more recently - the great Johnny Cash and the eternally young and very funny John Ritter - has brought me to tears more than I ever would have imagined.

I don't grieve for them, because I know they have found their Stairway to Heaven. I grieve for those of us left behind; I grieve for the loss of the era, the time that soon will be no more. That is the way of the world; the way it is meant to be. But even knowing this it is impossible not to want to hold on to those moments in time when they were still with us. When the world that I inhabited was younger and felt safer and somehow more solid.

I just watched the most moving rendition of NIN's Hurt as performed by a vulnerable Johnny Cash and it is a most heartbreaking and breathtaking performance and I had to share the link. For a moving tribute to Cash's most recent work, read the wonderful Gospel According to Johnny Cash.

John Ritter was a highly underrated talent, with an incredible gift to give: the gift of laughter. I think I was probably more shocked by his death than any other this summer and I am having a very hard time coming to terms with it. He just seemed much too young and too alive to be gone so quickly and without warning. A tribute to this enormously talented and charismatic all around nice guy was found along with CBS News report of his death.

Both of these great talents will be missed for the joy that they gave us all. My most heartfelt condolences and prayers go out to the grieving loved ones they have left behind.




Posted by etherealfire :: 1:21 AM :: 0 Comments:

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