Dead, at 69

Not once, but twice this week I’ve shed a tear at the death of someone famous.

It’s a curious feeling. I’ve never met David Bowie or Alan Rickman, and yet I feel as if I’ve lost something. I feel as if my life just won’t be quite the same now they’re gone.

There are people who will think this is ridiculous and, in a way, it is.

It is quite ridiculous, if you compare it to the death of a loved one. To suffering and injustice, of which there is far too much.

But this isn’t a competition. It’s alright to be sad about famous people dying. It’s okay to be sad over anything. Your favourite mug breaking (check). An old man walking home with a carrier bag (check). Your cat cleaning her paws (check). Any tiny insignificant thing (check).

There’s no league table of Acceptable Things To Cry About, whatever Twitter says.

Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham will always be my favourite role. I went to see Robin Hood Prince of Thieves at the cinema five times. I was 11 years old and that film taught me so much about myself.

1. Yes, you will always think bad boys are totally hot.
2. Torture scenes will make you boak.
3. You can be a feminist and still want someone to rescue you.
4. Socialism for the win.

When you develop an attachment to a film, a song, an actor or musician, they weave themselves through the fabric of your life. They provide the stories and the soundtrack that help shape you, because the films you choose to watch and the music you listen to is as much a part of you as the nose on your face.

I have wondered all week long just why I feel so sad. It’s not just that Rickman won’t be around to make movies, or that Bowie won’t make any more beautiful records. And it’s not because they were the same age as my Dad and I can’t bear to think about him dying.

Okay, it IS that, but that’s not all.

I think it’s because the thing they did for a living – telling stories – seemed bigger than life, and somehow bigger than death.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” says Joan Didion.

Yet, in the end, even the storytellers must go.