As we grow older the famous deaths start to mean more to us.
My mother, who is 84, was surprisingly (to me) upset a few weeks ago when Bob Hope died.
Mr. Hope was 100.
As a child of the Vietnam War, drafted because of it for starters, I never cared much for Hope, who was, to my mind, a warmonger trying to act like a comedian.
Friends who saw him in Vietnam said half the soldierly crowd booed him or flashed him the peace sign, something they said he obviously couldn't understand.
"He must have thought he was at Pearl Harbor," a combat-vet friend of mine said once, with the perfect timing and cynicism of a man who had seen way too much before the age of 21, and felt since there would never be enough people to blame, even if he started with his parents, LBJ and Ho, why not throw a little at Mr. Hope, too.
But to my mother, Hope lived up to his name.
He was youth - hers - and humor and musical comedy, too.
And at 84, I guess most of the famous deaths are of people younger than yourself, and so stir few memories.
As I was sitting down to write this column I was thinking about politics, which is more and more the common run for me; I feel I've been cursed by George W. Bush.
But I read the morning papers first, and discovered two Johns I've always liked, Cash and Ritter, had both died.
One of the Johns, Ritter, was my age. The other, Cash, had been a hero of mine in my younger years.
For those too callow to remember him, Ritter starred in one of the most inane television shows ever made, "Three's Company." The premise - he lived with two cute girls but was involved with neither - seemed racy 25 years ago. Although I've since dumped my television like the bad habit it was, I must confess I watched "Three's Company" more than once.
I always liked the idea that cheery, bland John Ritter was Tex Ritter's son. Tex Ritter was a leathery old cowboy actor whose most famous song, "Blood on the Saddle," used to make me and my teenage buddies howl with laughter.
Of course now, older, wiser (hopefully) and much more scarred, I listen to country music some. Not the polished pop crap like (fill in blank). But Steve Earle, the original Hank Williams and Hank Williams III. (Hank Williams Jr., the football-anthem guy, just proves talent often skips a generation.)
And I really like Wayne Hancock, and there was a time I would never have listened to real gutbucket country, much less admit to it publicly.
And, of course, I liked Johnny Cash.
"I Walk the Line," is one of the 10 most brilliant, simply written American songs ever recorded. An anthem in its way.
Johnny Cash lived an American life one step ahead of my generation. And he lived it large. He spent a little time in jail because of drugs, but he overcame his addiction. His songs turned political at times, and he seldom sided with the overdogs.
And he had that face ... all of his hard life, and his eventual triumphs, etched into his cheeks and forehead like knife wounds from God.
And a happy ending - his long marriage to June Carter, his musical equal, and in many ways his muse.
But in real life, the happy endings are always in the second act, since nobody leaves the theater of this earth upright.
June Carter Cash died recently, and in the photographs of Johnny Cash at her funeral service, one saw a very sick man.
So I wasn't surprised that Johnny Cash had died after reaching, just barely, the old biblical promise of three-score-and-10.
I couldn't help but be saddened.
There are new heroes (and villains) always emerging along with each new generation. But it's kind of hard sometimes to see those who meant something to us, from whatever distance, be removed from the scene by illness or old age.
There's a message in there somewhere for all of us, but it's not one I want to see too clearly this morning. I didn't know Mr. Cash, of course, not really, but I liked him and his gritty, earthy music.
I'm going to put on the Greatest Hits of Johnny Cash one more time and say goodbye.
