Rest in Peace Sir Terry Pratchett

I've been wanting to make this post since I first heard the news that Sir Terry Pratchett passed away. I just didn't know what to say.

I'm a big Terry Pratchett fan, won't claim to be the biggest, but I love the man's work. Even though I never had the chance to meet him I consider him a friend. This may seem odd but I consider all the author's I enjoy friends. Who but a friend can make you feel a wide range of emotions yet keep you coming back to them.

That being said when I first heard that Sir Terry had passed away though a facebook post by Neil Gaiman, I was stunned. I knew he was ill, I knew one day he would pass away, but knowing a thing is going to happen and having it actually happen are two different things.

I read his final four tweets, even in death he remained a story teller. I shed tears for this man I admired and never really knew. I would like to say that he was a great man, I'm sure his real friends would agree, sometimes I liked to think that if we ever met he would see something in me and my writing and take me under his wing as I struggled to get my fledgling writing career off the ground. That won't happen now, and I don't care.

What I do care about is that there will be no new adventures on that wonderful Disc World that he created. No more bumbling wizards to laugh at, strange magic to fear, corrupt politicians to hate and fear, and sometimes even admire. The Great A'Tuin has reached it's final destination, the elephants have passed away, and the disc has finished it's journey.

Death came and took Sir Terry long before his time. A man such as he deserved so much more time on this world for he had so much to give. I like to think that, like the death in his books, Death hesitated and didn't want to take his life. 

All that is left is his works, and that's really not a bad thing. We can always open one of his books and relive the stories he told, delight in his satire that so perfectly mirrored the world we live in and showed us the absurdity that much of life holds, if we were willing to look. 

Those precious books mean more now than ever, the denizens of his worlds will have no more new adventures, but in his books they live on, in his books he lives on. 

Sir Terry Pratchett's soul has left our world for one where he will be happiest, but his spirit stays with us in every word and every line of every book he wrote. Like a photograph of a loved one these books are but pale memories and little comfort but they are all we have left. 

Goodbye Sir Terry Pratchett, I will miss you. In my mind the streets of Ankh-Morpork are now empty, the gates to Unseen University are closed, and the Librarian has eaten his final banana. Now they will only live again when we open the books and read about them again, now you will live again whenever those books are read. In this sense you are not truly gone, you will never be forgotten, you will forever be missed.

Farewell friend I never met. You brought me joy, sadness, and inspiration, for that, you will forever be in the library of my heart.