Will I miss him?

I’ve been skimming some Christian obits about Christopher Hitchens. Once oft-repeated phrase that I run across is the sentiment that “I will miss him.”

I wonder what they mean by that. Is this just one of those pro forma pleasantries you’re supposed to utter when somebody dies?

What, exactly, will they miss? Are they alluding to his books? How many people care to read Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger? Or The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles? Or No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton? Or The Trial of Henry Kissinger? Or The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice? Or A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq?

So much of what he wrote is so dated, ephemeral, provincial.

What does it mean to miss someone? Who do we really miss? Who should we really miss?

We can miss friends and family. Those central, defining relationships. People we personally know and care about. People who mean something to us.

We miss them if they die or move away. In the same vein, it’s also possible to miss a pet dog or horse.

At a more trivial level, we can miss performers or entertainers, viz. singers, actors, songwriters. They are strangers in the sense that we don’t know them personally. Yet we may find them amusing or moving or insightful. If you like Johnny Cash, you miss him because he will never write another song, never sing another song.

Then there are people we miss, not so much for themselves, but because they remind us of a certain time of life, or a favorite place. In my father’s old age the phone rang one day. Turned out to be a girl he knew from Yakima High. She rang him up out of the blue. He hadn’t seen her or heard from her since he graduated from high school, around 1935. After 50 plus years of silence, she picks up the phone can calls him. Why?

Well, I don’t know for sure. She didn’t speak to me. But I can guess. She was at that point of life where she felt lonely. Abandoned. Her best years behind her. Far behind.

I don’t know that she missed him. There may well have been other students she was closer to. Maybe they were already dead. Or maybe she called him because she was able to find him in the phonebook. It’s harder to track down a girl you knew in high school because they generally take their husband’s surname when they marry.

I expect she phoned my dad, not because she missed him, but because he reminded her of her long lost youth. Something tangible to cling to as her life was slipping away.

Part of knowing what’s important in life is knowing what you ought to miss. In many cases we miss something we lost. A person. A place. A time of life. Or we may miss a lost opportunity. Something we never had, wish we had, might have had.

Because Hitchens was a writer, he wrote about his terminal disease. Detailed every stage of the process. His impending demise was naturally significant to him. It was his life, his death.

But that doesn’t make it equally important to anybody else. In my lifetime I’ve seen lots of celebrities come and go. Many of them led vapid, frivolous lives. Washed-up celebrities who frittered away their remaining time doing the talk show circuit–like The Steve Allen Show. It’s all so forgettable.

In a sense, Hitchens was more serious, but he lived for the world, and the world will leave him behind. For a few days the expected eulogies will be duly delivered, then the world will move on as if he never existed. He planted a garden in a forest fire. Time’s wildfire burns all our flowers to ashes.

I don’t miss him. That’s not personal–just the opposite. Famous people die every year. So what? Their fame doesn’t make their life and death more important than anyone else.

When I walk through the cemetery, I never see an epitaph that says, “She was valedictorian.” “She won a Golden Globe award.” “He went to Harvard.” "He was CEO of a fortune 500 company.” “He won the Heisman trophy.” “Voted realtor of the year.” "Best-selling author."

No, it’s usually a variant on “Beloved wife and mother.” Not very original. Not very imaginative. But that’s how they’re remembered.

Live for Christ, die in Christ. That’s all that counts. The rest is compost.