And it wasn’t just about the movies. It was the thought of a father, of a recent husband who somewhere, to an unknown extent had a grieving heart of his own.
It’s mind-bending, the thought…to have the best parts of you so visible…or what it would be like to find yourself in front of a camera and trying, just trying to be good, to be remembered. Then to be a small piece of a film that’s offered up to the world. To be offered up to the world. And suddenly everyone has a right to know and love, you…your life, or not, instantly materialized from air, from nothing.
He dealt make believe. And now, all that’s left, remnant memories…the life of a great and still budding talent coming to an instant and vicious halt. He had a pull, always had something of a pull, and now that he’s dead, I find myself realizing how easy it was to glance over the moment he became something else entirely, gravity, and in remarkable form, like a coat that takes time. Heath Ledger was a great promise far from ripe, an already rare talent and yet so far from realized.
He was a scientist on the brink of curing cancer. He was our hopeful to shatter record in the mile. He was a politician to rally sides divided. And the thought of a loss like that makes me sad. At the end of the day, all he was to us was an artist, an actor. But he was loved. The simplicity of it makes me sad.
I’m not going to come out and say he was too young, that it’s not supposed to go down like this. And I’m not going to fall back on crutches like, “this just goes to show.” Not a chance, ever…not how I’m constructed. Great and terrible things happen all the time.
Tonight, I rest with a heavy heart. Heavier than expected…and that seems to be the gathered sentiment.
We end on tonight’s final salute. Brilliant, tragic, brilliant…
