it's weird...it's sad that he's gone, but he'd been sick for a while. i think what lessens the blow is that he got to do the "star trek" reboot as his own farewell. i think had he not been involved in that, it would hurt a little more. but now i can look back at that movie and not only enjoy it for what it is, but also think of it as a send off (which i know it was meant to be in the first place)...so it's satisfying that we have that as a final mantelpiece in his career. for deforest kelly and james doohan, their lasting memory will be of "star trek: generations"...which is a mixed bag at best.

For me the send of of Deforest was his cameo in the pilot of STNG. No credit just him walking down the hallway talking with Data, it was a perfect set up for the Data character and his journey to his hope of becoming human. Data was the opposite of Spock. in that he was trying to embrace his humanity while Spock rejected it. That scene in the corridor between Bones and Data was priceless.
THe one character from TOS that I was wanting to show up in TNG was Sulu, but it never happened. Would have been cool.

Spock didn't reject his humanity. He just didn't know how to assimilate it.