My friend kateyule died this afternoon after struggling with brain cancer. Kate and I have known each other 20+ years and were very close the last ten or so. We shared a lot of things--art and craft and books and some very personal things. She was funny and very smart, very practical and creative. Kate and her husband davidlevine and I went to Disney World together, ( Read more... )

So . . . we all gathered at the Six Arms today, ostensibly in honor of Jay. A lot of folks were there. I knew all of them. We greeted each other, hugged. We ordered food. We talked a little about Jay. We talked about a lot of other things. And then ebourne and I left. We went and had ice cream. And . . . that was it ( Read more... )

In my last post, I mentioned that this past weekend I'd received news of a death. The death in question was that of my brother's best friend's wife. While this may seem like a distant connection, it's closer than you may think for reasons that will become clear.( Cut for flist mercy and for cancer and triggery stuff )

It's been a helluva year. With death and serious illness in my social circle, and my striking a half century in age, it seemed like it was time for me to do something enormously adult and, frankly, quite sobering: get my affairs in order. That's the euphemism many of us use for writing a will and thinking about The End. I was scheduled to have a ( Read more... )