Rest in Pieces: Eulogies of the Past, Present, and Future - Part 3 (Special Sections)

Just visualize for a moment that your cultural idol has passed away. Today: David Antrobus on Gun Club frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Chris Osmond appreciates the varied career of David Byrne, Courtney Young pens a letter to Michael Jackson and Diepiriye Kuku on the death of Luther Vandross.

Edited by Justin Dimos and Produced by Sarah Zupko Death, the dirt nap, the longest blink, pushing up the daisies, meeting the maker, slowed to a complete and utter stop, the dying of the light, the end, the final curtain call, that’s all folks, formally known as alive. And the great tragedy is that the ones about whom we most care -- whether family, friends, or those few popular culture icons that awaken our atrophied spirits -- leave us wandering the earth alone, abandoned with our dreadful grief, the world a little less shiny, a little more desolate than before.…