The Ripple Effect

    Robin Williams, funny man, is dead. Everyone has to die at some point but when we do it causes a ripple effect. Eventually people move on but you never really can replace the person who died.
     For Robin Williams things are no different. He was a great entertainer and performed for countless millions in his lifetime and will continue to even after his passing (just pop in one of his flicks and your good to go). Society, however, will not be able to create new works of modern art for him to perform in because he is just not there to do it.
      Society itself will move on, but will his family?
     When it's family it's more personal. The void is felt more for longer. There is a sense in which this person lived with you and shared life with you. The relationship is closer. He wasn't that old so I can't imagine what it must be like for those who did live with him to find out that he died. It must have been somewhat of a shock.
     People leave their marks on this world, some more than others. We each are making an impact, for better or for worse, and that impact is going to ripple out and impact others whether they know where their influence came from or not.
    Even after we are dead and gone there will still be at least fragments of our influence that last. I think of my great-grandma Eckdahl who died recently and remember some of the cute things she would say like, "those nuts are musty, I must have some more." Another of my great-grandmas (Edwards) passed down a book of poems that she and her sister used to recite along with some that she liked and a few written either by her or members of the family. (Which may be why I enjoy poetry so much.)
     People die but their influence in our lives is remembered. We can never replace them because there never will be a person quite like them again.