Till Shade is Gone

Dedicated to James Oliver Rigney, Jr.

October 17, 1948 - September 16, 2007

At thirteen, I think no other word would have done so much to capture the essence of me as well as the word “morose.” I had adopted a hunched manner of walking, preferred the site of my shoes to the gaze of others, and I could never be solicited to speak, unless the issue was of some purely trivial mechanical importance such as “pass the salt” or “take a left.” Although the label of “eccentric” has followed me throughout my life, I was at that age nothing less than a full blown “weirdo.”

My parents had recently divorced, and were more engrossed in their own mudslinging battle than they were in the fact that their son seemed to be slowly becoming a sociopath. Therefore, on top of my own “loosening from the world” I was often subjected to strange, and mostly terrible facts about the people who had brought me into this world. Still worse, my mother’s new lover, and my soon to be step-father, was a legitimately insane islander whose life’s passions were singing karaoke and hitting women who thought they were his equal. It was a bad time in my life, and while I never did go so far as to contemplate suicide, I sometimes wondered how much longer I could wait before madness crept up on me.

Perhaps the sole reason I did not snap, before I found inner strength of my own, was because of the peculiar bond between my Grandfather and I. In ways which I still do not understand, he had to me become some entirely perfect combination of drill-instructor, father, and teacher. When things at home seemed to be too much, he somehow almost magically declared that he was taking the grandkids on a camping trip the very following day. I was much older before I realized that he was attempting to provide some kind of relief valve in the horror that had become my life.

One particular camping trip in that long and hellish year stands out in my memory more vividly than any other. I was thirteen, at a low point I thought I would never come out of, and all the family I then cared to claim was at Cannon Beach, Oregon, very near Haystack Rock. As was my habit, I distanced myself from my cousins and began a long pace up a beach we were visiting, as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Haystack Rock a natural land-mark far out in the ocean, almost a mountain in the water, began to shrink over my shoulder as I sought the solitude of ever more distant strangers.

In what is perhaps the clichéd manner of depressed youth, I found that my wandering had led me to a bookstore. Although I cannot remember the name of it, I remember remarking that it was not a retail chain, and that the coffee black timbers of which it seemed entirely constructed, made the setting downright medieval. Strange though it may be, sitting here trying to remember it, I remember having the distinct feeling that the place had been there for centuries and would be there for centuries to come, like a pebble cast ashore from the river of time.

Out of a sense of obligation, I made only one purchase, not really even hoping to be moved, but feeling guilty that I had lingered in the store for so long. It was a longer title than usual, and did not seem typical of the other fantasy trash I was given to reading. I had heard of neither the title, nor author. “The Eye of the World” written by one Robert Jordan. It claimed to be the first of a much longer series called “The Wheel of Time.”

I spent that night with the book, curled up in a tent just outside my Grandfather’s motor-home, feeling strangely pessimistic that there was yet “another village” and “another wizard” going to recruit some youths to save the world. Only the fact that before the night was through I had read over 200 pages, said anything at all for how I would later feel about that book in particular and the series as a whole.

I put the book down only once, when I was three quarters of the way through. The real world was tugging at me too hard to ignore. My mother was having my stepfather’s child, and everyone was needed at the hospital. Although this would be a better dedication if I were to say that it was Robert Jordan who brought me back to the world of the living, I would be lying.

Somehow, in holding my newborn half-sister in my arms I was provided with the contrast I needed to see that there were still good things in the world, and that no matter how bad things got, there was always the persistence of hope to clutch to. I left “The Eye of the World” on my counter-top as I spent a week hovered over my little sister, marveling at the intoxicatingly beautiful notion that “old life begets new life.” When I finally got around to picking up the story where I had left off, my jaded attitude had vanished, and it was as though I had come back to an old friend.

New hope seeded in the vision of new life, breathed a soul into the characters that had been absent when I lacked the perspective to see beyond words. Thumbing through the pages of the climactic ending, I no longer seemed to be reading the book so much as I had become the book. As though all the life I had let pass me by had come surging back up like a tidal wave, I had been carried away into a world not my own.

It did not matter what happened in the next years. I had found my own candle to hold up when the world seemed consumed by darkness, and was no longer dependant on the warmth of others.

My Grandfather passed away when I was sixteen, and although it was difficult I found I could bear it. My little sister and now my little brother needed help, and I made myself strong enough to give it to them. I made no attempts to give them comforting religious dogma, instead choosing to tell them that since he must have come from somewhere before he was born it stood to reason that he had returned their after his life was over.

At nineteen I spent a summer working in a saw-mill, and saw a side of life I had never imagined while in school.

At twenty, sitting in a cramped college classroom, I began to wonder at whether or not I could really bear to spend my life as a scientist, when since as far back as I could remember I had wanted to write more badly than anything else.

At twenty-one, falling over from heat stroke on an oil rig in New Mexico, contracting as my body heaved in warning that the little more effort I had to give to get through the day could very well kill me, I mentally decided that the time had come to start writing again.

Through all of these things, Robert Jordan’s books have been there for me like old comrades from a war long over. I immersed myself in the world of his imagination, not because I needed to, but for the far more wonderful reason that I wanted to. I came into his world, not because of weakness but because of the strength I found in it. For the whole stretch of my life that matters, when I’ve wanted entertainment I’ve been able to go to a head-space that belongs solely to Robert Jordan and his cast of characters.

Yesterday, my little sister celebrated her tenth birthday. I was not there, but I talked to her at length on the phone, and while listening to how adult she had become it seemed so odd to remember the tiny little thing in my hands that had helped me remember life. I could almost believe in fate, because yesterday not only did my little sister celebrate her tenth birthday, Robert Jordan passed away to wherever he was before his birth.

I found this out slightly more than an hour ago, and felt the need to write down my feelings on it immediately. Although I have never met the man, never seen him, or heard so much as the sound of his voice, I cannot help but feel as though someone precious I have known since youth has been placed beyond my reach.

Although I am not a religious man, and would not pretend to be so even now, whatever sympathetic thoughts I have that can pass for prayers go out to his family and friends. The man you knew as James Oliver Rigney meant a great deal to me when he wrote as Robert Jordan and if that brings you any comfort at all, I welcome you to it and only wish I could offer more. Other than my Grandfather, no other man has meant so much to me in life as Mr. Rigney, and for all that and more I am sorry to see his light move out of this world.

Several very wise men and women I have had the privilege to read about, have spoken of a Wheel of Time, and have said that “the wheel weaves as the wheel wills,” and although this is not an explanation as to why this great man has passed, I believe he would have understood.

My condolences,

Andrew Allen Peterson

 

Author’s Note:

Dragonmount.com will be publishing funeral arrangements and other information as it becomes available.