Hello and Goodbye

I got a job today. I start on Monday. I think it'll be a good job - lots of contact with other people. (I will be the first point of contact for students and parents in the undergraduate registrar's office of a local university.) I'm excited to start something new and see where this step will take me. I also really liked the people that I will be working with, and in my experience, the people you work with can make or break your job experience!

I had my final interview on Tuesday afternoon, and then I headed out to meet my sister-in-law for a movie. She called before I got there to let me know that Heath Ledger was dead.

It was an interesting day.

I feel weird about Heath's death. I mean, he was a total stranger to me. I didn't even have a hope of someday meeting him. In spite of that, I grieve for him. And then I wonder if I even have the right to grieve. I feel like I knew him because I knew the characters that he portrayed, and I thought about him in the sense of "Oh, look who People says that Heath Ledger is dating right now!" But none of that was really him. So am I even really grieving him, or am I just grieving for Sir William Thatcher, or Patrick Verona, or even Casanova? And if the emotion is directed toward fictional characters, is it really even grief?

Maybe it's a little bit of grief mixed with shock. After all, Heath is the first to die of the younger generation of actors - the ones that I grew up watching on TV and in those teen movies. Maybe what I feel is really just a sense of shock, a realization that we're not invincible just because we're young, and that he was not invincible just because he's famous.

Either way, this is my farewell to Heath Ledger - or to the idea of him. From someone that he never knew.

Goodbye, Mr. Ledger.