It’s been a hard weekend for boomers and their stars. Don Knotts,Darren McGavin, and Dennis Weaver all departed for what I hope is a better place. McGavin made the biggest impression on me, mostly, I think, in guest roles on TV, though Christmas Story certainly reinforced that.

By the standard of three-score-and-ten, these actors had lived full lives. The author Octavia Butler died from a fall last Friday at age 58. That’s too young for such talent, for anyone I suppose. Her science fiction pulled together evangelical Christianity, genetics, urban decay, and race in often extraordinary ways. Parable of the Sower was the book I liked best. It chronicled a breakdown in society and the responses to it. In particular it followed a young woman, Lauren, daughter of a Baptist minister, who devised a new gospel in which this was the basic rule: God is Change.” Even better was the hard fought hope that she forged for herself and others with that basic truth.

These four are dead. “God is change.” And we the living do what we do: we forge hope and meaning from the lives we have cared for and so steal a bit of them back from the grave.