Death, Loss and Where Will It Take Your Heart?

As I read through the Facebook postings this morning over coffee, I was amazed to see how many people were affected by The Office character Michael Scott's leaving the show. It has been talked about for months, and dreaded by many fans. Yet, what I truly find amazing in this, is the fact that the character is not a real person, but the change in the show brought about real feelings in people.

This is not a new thing for me, I've had it happen to me before, in a book that I read many years ago. I am a huge Star Wars fan (And not only in height and weight.) and years ago when there started to be new stories written in the Star Wars universe, I couldn't wait to read the latest book and would often purchase it in the hard back version because of my eagerness to see what was going to happen next.

There was a new threat posed to that universe that I learned about in the book Vector Prime written by R.A. Salvatore, they were called the Yuuzhan Vong. These characters made the Empire look like girl scouts. But the thing about this story, was that the powers that were in charge (George Lucas being one of them.) decided that to enhance the story and to show how truly bad this new threat was, they would need to kill off a major character from the original movies.

So you may understand my shock and surprise as I read in that book about Han Solo, his youngest son Anakin and Chewie working feverishly to get as many people as possible on the Millennium Falcon to save them from their planet which was being destroyed, and Chewbacca in true Wookie form, in an act of self-sacrifice staying behind on the dying planet so that Han's child wouldn't have too.

Take a look at the following passage from the book Vector Prime:

Chewie turned about and took one step toward Han and the Falcon, and then a burst of tremendous, hot wind blasted through, tossing him to the ground, toppling buildings. One pile of rubble crashed atop the Falcon - her shields groaned in protest - and sent the nose of the ship up, up.

Anakin fought her back to level, started to turn her about to find the Wookie, but saw instead,

in all her devastating glory, the last descent of Dobido, (The planet's moon which was crashing into the planet.) the arrival, to those faithful natives still praying in the ruined streets, of Tosi-karu.

They were out of time. Anakin knew it immediately. If he turned for Chewie, if he did anything other than take her straight up and out, the explosion of the crashing moon would tear the Falcon apart.

He heard his father's pleading cry to get him back to Chewie.

He pointed the Millennium Falcon skyward and punched the throttle.

Han saw.

A battered and bloody Chewie regained his footing, stood up high on one pile of rubble, and faced the descending moon with arms upraised and a defiant roar. A fitting last pose of defiance, but one that did nothing to mend the tear ripping through Han's heart.

I must admit that my heart was also torn as I read this part of the book. And truthfully this really did surprise me. I mean after all this is a fictional character from a fictional planet that doesn't even exist! How could my heart be saddened by the death of Chewbacca?

I think the answer lies in our hearts. We are relational to our core, and since that is the case that means that even the lives of characters which are not real touch our lives because of the characteristics which are real. Chewbacca's loyalty to Han Solo touches me, because I long for that type of loyalty in my life. Michael Scott's leaving Dunder Miflin to move off to be with the woman that he loves, well then our hearts cry out that we too desire that kind of love.

So, it's not really unusual for these kinds of things to happen, I guess the question is when they do happen, what is it revealing about our hearts? And that is the central thing about us all, fictional and real. Get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom today!