"Jesus, oh Jesus, I don't want to die alone." - Johnny Cash in 1996's Spiritual

There is nothing quite so heart-wrenching as watching a lonely old rebel pass on to the next world. It's like the last Tyrannosaurus rex crying out, then slumping down into the tar, finally still, forever doomed to be picked at by the needy anthropologists.

But Johnny Cash, simply put, was the greatest. Better than Elvis and Janis and Jimi put together.

I'm surprised at how many tears I'm wiping off, writing this. It's hard to see. Besides his timeless music, Cash's shortcomings made him feel like a friend and it hurts like hell. We agreed on the sorry state of modern country music, and suffered under our powerlessness to do anything substantial about it. Another legend clears space for the clamouring wannabes. You can already hear the hokey tribute albums on their way.

Everyone knew Cash was on his way out, and as his daughter Rosanne told me this summer, "Of course I (worry about him); he just got out of the hospital, and he's thrilled to be free. It's that point that so many of my friends my age have reached. Our parents are becoming fragile and ill. You don't really expect it till it hits you in the face."

Bang. That time is now. Hooked on drugs for too much of his life, Cash symbolically walked the line between wickedness and good, always preaching the gospel, even in dark times of imprisonment, addiction, ill health and the recent death of his wife, June Carter Cash.

His compassion for prisoners was immense. His hope inspired Merle Haggard out of the joint and onto the stage. He was great friends with Willie Nelson, another rebel abused and abandoned by the system that made them.

As the capstone to the American series of comeback records, the excruciating video for Hurt reflected heavily on the past, images of him and June as beautiful children contrasted against gold records with broken glass, now covered in dust.

In it, a nearly transparent Johnny Cash sits in his empty den, the ghost of June briefly hanging over him. Without her, his fear of dying alone seems to have passed.

But Johnny, you're not alone. Millions of us are weeping. Millions of us are wearing black.