This is an expansion of some thoughts I had in a thread on my friend's Live Journal. The discussion was particular about the passing of several actors from Babylon 5 over the last few years, most recently, Andreas Katsulas, who played G'Kar. The others who have passed on are Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin and Tim Choate, who played Zathras. While the discussion centered around these actors, and their work on B5, my thoughts started drifting over the many, many people who told a story into my life. Actors, writers, musicians, even radio personalities are storytellers, bards in our world.

I'm not thinking about celebrities, per se, although many are stars. I guess I've reached the age where many of those who told me stories over the years have begun to pass on. For some, it was only after a long, full life, and not a sad occasion. For others, however, they went too young, some even younger than me. That is the real shocker, when your own generation starts disappearing, especially for those who told tales that meant something personally.

I'd like to list some of these, and talk a little about what their stories meant to me. There is no particular order, and some have been gone for quite awhile now. I can't go through them all, but I hope to pull some truth out of them at the end.

Johhny Cash I remember as a child laughing about the 'A-dapter Kit' in his song, One Piece at a Time, about a man who steals a Cadillac over a lifetime on the auto assembly line. I was helping the man who was my God-mother's fiance put new seats and backs on a kitchen dinette set. It was a simple handyman project, but there were adapters supplied, and the song was on the radio, and some things are just funny to a 12 year old. He died after a very long life, and told truth about the soul of a man, and mankind.

Douglas Adams This man created a perverse universe that defied the best efforts of his characters to understand. At the same time, it was a place that wasn't nearly as strange as the universe I live in. He died too soon, suddenly, in a car accident. He had so many more things to teach us about absurdity, and about caring for the world we have been given.

Andreas Katsulas It's not so much the man, as the character he played on Babylon 5. He was a true Samurai, a warrior-priest. Long a slave, G'Kar learned that to forgive your enemy is both the best and hardest thing to do. He learned that seeking truth, and being true to your belief does not mean you give up fun. He learned that being a leader in peace and victory is far harder than leading a rebellion. Of course, these ideas come from the writers of the TV show. But they could not carry the impact without an actor to speak them into existence, to show them to us in a way that is true. An actor can do this well only if his own soul is present in the work.

James Doohan Scotty was always my favorite character in the original Star Trek series. While Mr. Doohan wasn't the greatest actor, he made the character work. Scotty could fix anything, and would spare no effort in doing his duty to his ship, and his friends.

Bob Collins Bob Collins was the Morning host at WGN radio, 720 AM in Chicago. Before that, he was the afternoon and early evening guy, starting in the mid 1970's, until his death in 2000, in a plane crash. Bob was a good ol' boy, who got the chance to be the biggest radio personality in the midwest. He was funny, wise, fun-loving and kind. He took his job seriously, without being serious about it, and he held his friends in the highest regard. I started listening to him as a kid. I especially remember when he and his newsman would read the weekly soap opera synopsis from the newspaper. They could not ever finish it without cracking up. His death was a shock, coming as it did right after he finished one morning. The small plane he was piloting collided with another plane, and crashed.I could list many more, and I might add to the list over time, but I need to get to sleep soon, and I want to finish up my thoughts.

Our life is a story. Each of us tells it as we go, and each of us is taught something in the stories told to us by others. There are some individuals whose stories tell something truer than we realize, or even that they know. It does not matter if it is their own life, or the story they tell in their art, the fact is, they tell a tale that weaves itself into us deeply. From Douglas Adams, with his creation of Arthur Dent, Dirk Gently, and a universe where spaceships fly on the mathematics of restaurant tabs, and are hidden from view by appearing to be Someone Else's Problem, to Johnny Cash, who told stories in his music and his life that all of us should truly hear; these are the storytellers from my life.

Now, about the title of this piece. I suppose it's a bit cliche to be thinking about mortality and so forth when one has attained the ripe old age of 40. I really don't care. I've started seeing people from my youth and young adulthood die. They have stopped telling their stories, and that makes my story less rich. I'll never know if DIrk Gently would come back for a third adventure solving a mystery by cosmic chance.

Who are the storytellers in your life? Whose tales are woven into yours? And who are no longer telling their stories, except in your memory?