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What is it about death? What is it about dying young? Beauty, brilliance, and promise cut short, gone way too soon? Why does the loss throw us into a confounding sadness and endless questions? Banal, existential to the just plain tabloid. The whys and the what ifs.

He was blond and built yet defied cliched stardom routes. His portrayal of the cinematic square-jawed, mono-drawling Western hero embodied every celebrated big-screen tradition then threw it out the window unto the faces of Rev. Phelps and his ilk and our own closeted biases in HD-colored heartbreak. The fact that he was chosen to play the Joker, a role immortalized in stone by Nicholson speaks volumes on his gifts. Many people were enamored by him as the golden boy in 10 Things or A Knight's Tale but I chose to remember him on the silver screen as the tragic Southern boy, the loving and unloved son in Monster's Ball. Or far better as just him as the head of one beautiful young family running errands on the streets of New York caught for posterity by nosey paparazzi lenses.

For most of us he might be the last person we expected to be in the six o'clock news rolled out in a gurney, wrapped in a body bag so early into a new year, a blooming career, parenthood. Just early on in general.

Heath Ledger, actor, leading man, lover, artist, son and father is dead. To paraphrase a quote about another loss of another golden Wunderkind (this time from music), we have barely begun to grasp how much he shall be missed.