Death | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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March 16, 2015 · 6:44 am

Rainy Saturdays

I’ve been doing a little more reading lately. I like reading on my Kindle. Might have some book review blogs to write for Best in Fantasy soon. I had to cut back on that because my editing business picked up rather sharply and my previously copious quantities of free time suddenly became moot.

Also I’m a regular contributor at Edgewise Words Inn, which has been a LOT of fun. But this means I must occasionally write…doh!

The reading world suffered a great loss when we heard the news that Sir Terry Pratchett had died. His work was hilarious, irreverent and absolutely divine. Of all his many great characters, I think Death was his best, and Mort was my favorite book in the Discworld Series.

Losing him just emphasized the rain this weekend. It’s been a strangely warm winter for us Pacific Northwesterners. For one thing, down in my valley we had no snow. Usually we get at least a small snowstorm. We’ve had a little frost, but nothing terrible.

Also, we’ve had very little black-ice this year, for which I am grateful, but truthfully that really is odd. Black ice, sometimes called clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface. While it’s not truly black, it is virtually transparent, allowing the black asphalt/macadam roadways or the surface below to be seen through it—hence the term “black ice.” It’s been a winter staple here for the last few years–going to work in the morning on a safe, dry pavement takes all the adventure and high drama out of the morning commute.

It was a normal rainy March weekend, and I’m so spoiled by a winter of sunshine and warm weather, that I feel all whiny about it.

I know–how sad.

So on Saturday we got over the way most people do–we went shopping. I upgraded my phone and and got a fancy thing or two–and we bought food, and baked a pie in honor of Pi Day. But not one this fancy—>

It was sort of fun– I don’t really do a lot of shopping in person, because the Drones of Amazon will deliver anything I need, from glittery hair clips to zebra print carpets. I get my music, kindle books, clothes, shoes–you name it, I get it from Amazon. They even sell books, and deliver them right to my house!

But Sunday was a different thing. Dealing with a kidney stone. Didn’t sleep well–woke up at 2:30 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Suffered the agonies of the damned but survived another one. Stayed home and figured out how to use the new technology. Tried to catch up on my writing.

Accidentally blew off a write-in.

Oops.

Actually, when I am having a day like that, I doubt if I should be allowed behind the wheel of a vehicle… .

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Filed under Battles, blogging, Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as books, creative writing, Death, fantasy, fiction, humor, indie publishing, Mort, My Writing Life, Pi Day, rainy weekends, self publishing, Terry Pratchett, writing

February 3, 2014 · 6:39 am

Mortality and Wine

Left Behind —

The twisty path that life takes us down sometimes brings us into the circle of a person we can call friend. We may meet at the home of a mutual friend, or we may meet in a writing group. Over time we get to know and like them. We look forward to seeing them; indeed, we expect to see them at certain parties, as if they were the underpinning of the entire event.

When they are suddenly taken from this life with no advance warning, you are stunned, feeling as if you were ambushed by their death.

Perhaps it was a close friend, or maybe it was a person you were only beginning to know well. Either way we are faced with a disconcerting feeling of being left behind—not that we wanted to die, but rather that we didn’t want a person we cared about to leave without us.

When a parent, a spouse, a sibling or a child dies, there are no words to describe the pain. The same goes for the death of that friend who is your other half, your ‘bestie’, your brother-in-arms.

The friend who would help you bury the body.

That loss is a tearing, shattering pain time may ease, but which always leaves a scar. Every person handles this experience in a different way. Some of us become better people through surviving a devastating personal loss, and some do not.

The death of a friend who is more than simply an acquaintance, yet not intimately tangled in your life is a different kind of loss.

It’s one we will all experience, and perhaps it’s not as profound as the loss of your best friend, but it is no less shocking and disconcerting. That death is experienced differently than if he were a friend who is a close family member.

He is someone we had known only a few years, a friend we were only beginning to really know. He is someone who is in many ways a mystery although we regularly met at parties and social events. He is someone with whom we have enjoyed long conversations over wine and cheese, shared risqué jokes, and laughed at the incongruities of life.

We had only started to walk the road of life together, only begun to know him as a traveling companion, and suddenly he is gone.

When a friend who is not yet close to you dies, a hole is left in your life, a hole filled with possibilities, packed with the prospect of what your friendship could have grown into, given more time and more parties.

Although it’s comforting to know that he touched more lives than just ours, it’s hard to realize we’ll never talk about wine with him again, never see him standing in that spot he always claimed in Nancy’s kitchen, never see him and his little dogs again.

Never hear him tease, “Vegan chili is an oxymoron,” as he serves himself at the buffet.

It’s hard to imagine him going alone into that unknowable frontier we must all eventually pass into, hard to imagine him letting go of this life when he was so vivid and filled with energy and passion for his art the last time we saw him. I will never pour a glass of wine again without thinking of our good friend who loved the craft and the art of wine-making so much, and whose wines were the source of many happy moments for many more people than just me.

His many friends are now feeling the same sense of loss and confusion I am feeling. My heart goes out to his close family and to our dear friends Michael and Nancy, intimate friends of his who are stunned and bereft; loved ones who still can’t believe he’s gone.