h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Douglas Adams is dead...

Posted May 14, 2001

The following text is an email I sent to my personal mailing and discussion list (PANICtm) this morning. It was written in a bit of a hurry, so please excuse the shoddy grammar and inadequate expression.

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I found out yesterday (Sunday).

I was studying and my mother came up to my door and said: "Hey Patrick, you know that writer you like?" and I said: "Who, Douglas Adams?" and she said: "Yeah, well he just died, it said on the news." I flung open the door and said: "What?" and she said: "He died."

I was utterly horrified. "People die, Patrick, it has to happen eventually," said my mother and went back to whatever it was she had been doing. She is obviously not sensitive to facial expression because I was in horrible, horrible pain. A few seconds later she came back into my room because she heard me crying and a few seconds after that I was sobbing into my mother's chest for what must have been the first time since I was a f___ing toddler. I cried and cried and cried and I couldn't make it stop. I kept on going out to the kitchen to get tissues and whenever I stepped back into my room, I started crying even harder because there are Douglas Adams books sitting in it.

People I know - people I actually know - have died before and it hasn't affected me. People die. Big deal. I'm never going to see them again. No problem. But Douglas Adams - he wasn't just a part of my life, he was a part of me. So much of my personality is the result of his influence. He helped build my brain. More than C S Lewis, more than Oscar Wilde, more than anybody. And now Douglas Adams is dead. There will never be another Dirk Gently book. He will never write another word because he is dead. And I think this is the saddest thing that has ever happened to me, ever.

Forty-nine years old. Forty f___ing nine.

It's not fair, at all. I'm very, very sad.

All the accidents I've ever had and all the girls who have broken my heart cannot compare to this. I am in such pain. It's totally unexpected and not pleasant.

Anyway, I could do with a hug.

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Latest reply: May 14, 2001