A Farewell To Anne McCaffrey

Posted by Becka Goad on Nov 22, 2011 in Authors, Books, General | 3 comments

My dearest Anne,

I heard of your passing today with a heavy heart, and the longer I think about all that I owe to you, the deeper my regret grows. I never had the chance, beyond the exchange of coinage, to give voice to the gratitude I felt for the many hours of pleasure your efforts brought me. I never had the chance to grasp you by the hand, to smile at you, and to express the joy in simply living your words and worlds shared with me.

I first found you in ‘Dragonflight‘, where you showed me that it didn’t matter who you were, how you were raised, or whether anyone else believed in you, it only mattered that you believed in yourself, and expressed that belief in a will of iron tempered in a forge of unyielding personal morality. You let me see that I was not the only one who saw the world for what it could be, I was but one member of a small army. I shall miss you for that, and for so much more.

When you shared the tales of even minor background characters, fully fleshed in their own tales, it taught me that there were no small roles in life, merely those whose moment of focus had yet to arrive. Your descriptions of flight in both spaceship and on dragonback lifted my soul during some of the darkest hours of my life, and even during periods of depression so severe I was purging anything and everything I valued over the years, I clung somewhat desperately to those novels I’d read and re-read since my childhood. The ‘Crystal Singer‘ series helped me escape during an ugly divorce, and the ‘Dinosaur Planet‘ books gave me much to think about while I rebuilt my life.

‘Petaybee‘ and the Rowan kept me company on long sleepless nights as I rocked my first fussy baby, and the tales of the MasterHarper comforted me while I rocked my second a decade later. Acorna, a nature spirit personified if ever there was one, and the indomitable Moreta inspired me to find inner strength I never suspected when health issues started to mount and I was faced with being unable to work at the only trade I’d ever known. ‘Sky Dragons‘ is the final breath you’ve offered into the world, in concert with your son Todd, and I will treasure each word as I have all the others, the knowledge that this will be the last of your novels adding a bittersweet note to the song of Pern.

In short, Ms. McCaffrey, you’ve brought so much to my life, and brightened up the shadowed corners of this existence. I truly wish I’d gotten to meet you, and thank you in person, but this letter is now all that is left for me to offer. All that I can promise is that you will not be forgotten, as long as your words echo in the minds and hearts of those, like myself, who dare to believe in something greater and more glorious than that which surrounds us.

Aloft as always on your wings,

Becka Goad

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