The trees have almost given up their leaves; a few still cling gamely to their summer perches. Thanksgiving has given way to the emptiness of early December, when Christmas seems to be hovering on the horizon and students start to dread Finals Week.

The high school football players hang up their well-worn uniforms. Basketball season is here, and the air waves are already laced with Christmas movies and advertisements.

It should be a happy time of year. A four-day weekend, a serving of leftover turkey giving my stomach a pleasantly full feeling, Christmas just around the corner...why can't I be content?

Then I glance over at where the White Album poster is on my wall and I realize why. The mournful gaze there is particularly unsettling as the end of the year approaches. This is when it's hard to listen to any of his songs without inevitably thinking of a cold December night eighteen years ago. This is when if people mention December 8, I freeze and suddenly become lost in thought.

I regret that I never lived when he did; I missed it by a little over a year. I never waited eagerly for the next album, the next single, wondering what he would think of and release next. The closest I came was the release of the Anthologies. I was able to listen to a brand new song with close to the same sense of wonder and joy that my parents may have felt. It wasn't the same, though, for a reason that is painful to many, including me.

Now that dark date has begun to recede into history. Many people today don't even blink when December 8 is mentioned. Some barely know who he was and is.