[Spotlight Post] Sir Terry Pratchett – Leaving Early to Avoid the Rush

I’m tired of memorial posts. I really am. The losses are piling up even in the midst of seasons turning to Spring and new life. Two weeks ago we bid farewell to Leonard Nimoy with Harve Bennett following close on his heels. Very early this week, the DFW area lost Terry Dorsey, a long-time radio personality with whom my father worked when we first moved here. Now…now we’ve lost Terry Pratchett. We knew it was coming, just not when.

We hear a lot about Cancer and the “F… Cancer” campaigns, but what’s also needed are “F… Alzheimer’s”. This is an insidious disease that robs its victims of their minds, their memories, and their personalities. That Sir Pratchett suffered from early-onset made it that much more vile. He is gone much too soon. There will be no more Discworld, no more Omens, just no more stories. Sir Pratchett was a master of humor and storytelling. He was an inspiration to all of us.

I met him once in 2000 at AggieCon working with my friend, Nicole and our friend, Lori, came along for the ride. I did my ONE AND ONLY foray into costuming by inexpertly sewing together an interpretation of a Rincewind costume that I was afraid to do more than walk around one evening. I chickened out of the costume contest (there were MUCH, MUCH better costumes).

I did get Sir Pratchett to sign a couple of books at the time. And fortunately, that was a time when I was actually doing some scrapbooking – so the pictures were findable. I remember him being charming and personable. I wish I’d had the opportunity to have gotten to know him better than that one meeting, but at least there was that.

That AggieCon was the stepping off point for a lot of my career – it’s where I met (I think) Jamie Murray as Myhr, got sucked into convention running, eventually got my butt kicked to write ORIGINAL fiction and not fan fiction (though I had quite a bit of fan fiction out at that point through Nicole’s Fanzines). The rest is history – a history that Terry Pratchett will always be a part of. And though he may have forgotten much of what made him special through this awful, awful disease – we won’t forget. He will live in our memories and through his stories.

In a way, Sir Pratchett will never die – because his ripples will never fade – and for that, I will be eternally grateful.

Tags: AggieCon, death, discworld, memories, RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett, Spotlight post, Writing