On March 12th, 2015, in the early afternoon, I learned that Terry Pratchett had died. The news hit me right in the chest—for a moment or two, all I could do was sit and stare at the headline. In some ways, I’d been bracing myself for this (he’d been declining for quite some time), but seeing it, actually seeing the word “dead,” was so unexpected and so final that I couldn’t quite accept it. There’s no way, I thought to myself, but the evidence was overwhelming.
I never met Terry Pratchett—and now, obviously, I never will. This means that I don’t necessarily have the right to mourn him, as his family and friends do. But Terry Pratchett was a rebel, and he wrote about rebels, so I think I’ll follow his example and ignore societal expectations. He is a man worth mourning, after all. (He used to wear a shirt to fantasy conventions that read, “Tolkien dead. J K Rowling said no. Philip Pullman couldn’t make it. Hi. I’m Terry Pratchett.” The world needs more men like this.)Thus, after I had told the people who needed to be told, I turned my attention to mourning.
Mourning authors, in some ways, is easier than mourning close family members and friends because a) often the only connection you have to an author is their books, so what you’re really mourning is the fact that you will never have a new book by Terry Pratchett or Maya Angelou or P.D. James (or whichever literary light you’re most attracted to) and b) you still have their books. It’s a big decision, of course, which book you’ll read right after an author’s passing. Did I want to read Going Postal, a book I tend to read when I’m stressed and overwhelmed? Did I want to read Guards, Guards, which I tend to read when I’m happy and relaxed? Perhaps I ought to do the obvious thing and read one of his books about Death, the only character who appears in every Pratchett book. Eventually I stumbled onto the proper book, with a little help from my best friend (who, by the way, choose to read Reaper Man in the wake of Terry Pratchett’s death). I am currently reading the first Terry Pratchett book I ever read: Good Omens.
(In some ways, this is a terrible choice, since Pratchett only co-wrote it, but it is still the book that introduced me to Pratchett-land and it holds a very special place in my reading world.)
Of course, there is another way to mourn. An event like this always sends people out to stores to amass more of an author’s work—and I am no different. The day after, I got myself to my local used bookstore—and discovered a blank shelf where the Pratchett books would have been. This actually pleased me more than if I had been able to buy myself some more Terry Pratchett books. I would have been sadder if I had been able to buy Pratchett books, because that would have meant that no one cared he was dead.
One of Terry Pratchett’s characters has the family motto “Non Timetus Messor,” which translates roughly into “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” A lot of people have referenced this motto in the wake of his death as a particularly appropriate one. I certainly think it is. But, just as with his books, it is impossible to simply have one favorite Terry Pratchett quote. So I’ll leave you with another, one that I think clearly demonstrates Terry Pratchett’s wisdom and humor. “Getting an education,” he writes in Hogfather, “was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.”
Good-bye, Sir Terry Pratchett. You’ll be fervently missed.
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