An Immense Talent, A Tragic Loss

"They're reporting that Heath Ledger died," my sister Cindy said. I was hunched over my computer, writing a difficult piece, and she'd called me from work. "The news is just breaking."

"What???!!!" It couldn't be true. Not him. Please let it not be him. I got off the phone and rushed into the living room. Nothing yet. Then onto the Internet for a search. Didn't find it at first. Then there it was. The strewn pills. The suggestion of suicide. Heath Ledger, dead in New York at 28.

It was one of those sick-stomach stand-still moments, like when my mom told me that JFK Jr's plane had disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic.

It was true, of course. Later reports would be more accurate, more respectful. The pills were not strewn, it was likely a tragic accident.

Although I didn't know Heath Ledger, I had tremendous admiration for him as an artist. He was clearly a genuine talent. His performance in "Brokeback Mountain" was up there with the greatest of all time, hinting at the character and integrity of the human being behind the performance -- a heterosexual man, with the guts to tackle that material.

But I had a weird feeling of premonition when reports came out last September that he'd split from his fiancee, Michelle Williams, the mother of his 2 year old child. "Not good," I thought. If the images I saw of them on television the night of the 2006 Academy Awards were in any degree reflective of the truth, they looked like the archetype of young genuine love.

For that to have gone wrong, even after they'd had a child together, suggested something very wrong. Whether it was Hollywood, too much too soon, pushing him too hard with its sick falsity and emphasis on box office, or the lure of partying opportunities, or fear of intimacy, self-loathing, or all of the above, who knows? Often, the most sensitive and perceptive humans are the ones who suffer the most from melancholy, self-doubt. And then, enter the prescription drugs or the alcohol or what-have-you and the stage is set for tragedy.

This is a very very sad day. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him. I know the pain of heartbreaking loss. The wound heals even as it always bleeds.