Has anybody here, seen my old friend Hans…

This posts has nothing to do with work...other than I am finding it a little hard to concentrate on it.  File it under "entertainment news" or take a moment to reflect...Either way, thanks for reading it (and props if you get the song reference at the end)

Today I was driving to work and heard of the passing of Alan Rickman.  While to some of you younger kids he was some kind of a professor or wizard or something, he will always be known to me and my generation as the man who tried to take over  Nakatomi Plaza and held John McClain at bay in the greatest Christmas movie of all time.  (Don’t argue with me, Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie ever…period), Hans Gruber.  He passed away after battling cancer.  As I write this, I am listening to Starman, a song sung by Ziggy Stardust himself, David Bowie.  We lost him 5 days ago after an 18 month fight with the same disease.  A battle he fought out of the public eye. I type this on my computer, where my screen saver is a picture of Lemmy, the bassist for the legendary heavy metal band Motorhead.  He died a couple of days after he found out he had an aggressive form of it.  All three passed away within a month of each other.    

This really hits home for me as three important pieces of my childhood have been taken away by the same horrible thing that had taken two of my brothers.  I don’t have to get too in depth about cancer.  We have all been affected by it.  We all personally know someone who has lost their battle…just like we all know someone who had fought this deadly disease and triumphed.  Cancer knows no age, ethnicity, sexuality, color, political ideology, gender or any other descriptive word we could use to divide us into categories.  Even as we make more and more strides to cure it, it continues to devastate us and chip away at our lives by taking away friends, family, co-workers and even our heroes and villains.  The one thing that it cannot take away however are our memories.  The joy we felt when we were surrounded by our loved ones.  Regardless of whether we were head banging to Motorhead, circling the earth with Major Tom or eating popcorn while we watched Hans Gruber taunt Officer McClain, (again, in the greatest Christmas movie of all time), cancer might have taken away the person, but not the memories.  Not the memories of these great artists and not the memories of my two brothers or your loved ones. 

Take a moment to think of the memories these pop culture icons left and the impact they ha in our lives, then take a longer moment to remember the loved ones that you lost and the shared moments you had with them while listening to or watching these icons.  Then if you can donate or volunteer your time to help battle cancer so that maybe we can one day we can find a cure and never have to hear that word again in anything other than a history class.

Anybody here, seen my old friend Hanz, can you tell me where he’s gone?  I thought I saw time walking up over a hill, Ziggy and Lemmy and Hanz.