Yes, I know there have already been plenty of tributes. But for me, it was only a sad event, not a heart-catching one. I've always been leery of mass mourning. I've always been suspicious of people claiming to be emotionally wounded by the deaths of those whom they didn't personally know. So, the death of Charles Shultz was more a disappointment at the lack of the entertainment he gave, like Jim Varney's death, then any deep grief.
However, while turning through the paper a week after, I came across the editorial comic for the day. Done by Mother Goose and Grimm, it was Snoopy, sitting on his doghouse with his flight goggles, flying away up in the clouds. That got to me.
Maybe it's because I once played in the musical Snoopy, where my brother actually played the part of Snoopy, even rewriting part of the musical to shorten up a sequence. He rewrote it from the Snoopy who wrote a novel to the Snoopy that flew in dangerous territory as the World War I Ace and got shot down by the Red Baron, only to stop for a root beer in a French cafe. I considered it one of the best Snoopy sequences I ever saw, and the thing that made it such was just because that was the way Snoopy was. That musical was also the last musical directed by one of the greatest musical influences on my life, Mr. Lance. He taught choir as his regular job. He taught me and many others how to care about the proper ways to breathe and pronounce vowels and all those little things that can turn a bunch of seperate voices into a Division I winning choir.
Maybe it's because of my grandfather. He wasn't in World War I. He was in World War II. But he was a 'flying ace'. He died almost exactly a year and a half ago, and it shocks me to think that it's actually been so long as that. My grandfather was a great influence upon my life, the man whom we called 'Grandbear' and bought teddy bears with flight jackets for. I still miss him.
But a good deal of it is just for Snoopy. Linus taught us the true meaning of Christmas. Charlie Brown was our company that misery loves through bad days and hard times. Snoopy, however, was the dreamer and philosopher who let his imagination drag him away. He was the famous writer, the World War I Flying Ace, Joe Cool and Flash Beagle. He had little friends whom only he understood that followed him in camping and sledding and a hundred other activities. And through it all, he could come back, eat his food and sleep on his roof, and find perfect happiness. Out of all of the Peanuts, seeing Snoopy fly off into the sunset instead of dodge his way back home again was the hardest one for me to watch. He really is all those things I always dreamed about as a kid. I'll miss him a lot.
So, with all the other Woodstocks, it's time to say goodbye. But how? How do you say goodbye to dreams and hopes? How do you say goodbye to imagination and happiness? You don't. There'll always be a little piece of Snoopy with me and with all of us who look at life a little differently from the rest.
Anna, aka The Dorcat, aka Sloopy