Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

I wish I'd gotten more sleep, but I woke up hungry at 5:00 a.m. again, so I'm snarfing Grape Nuts -- yay, fully healed lack-of-wisdom-teeth -- and trying to do productive things as long as I'm awake. In a couple of hours I will go sherpa for pnh and papersky and someone WINOLJ casacorona: I will help haul things and possibly give directions if necessary. I will attempt to be a useful local helper-monkey for most of the day. You do what you can, and this is what I can.

Mike Ford's memorial is at 2:00; full information here. And that'll have my attention all day, and after as well. We will see how the rest of the week looks when we get there, I guess.

Be well. Hug your loved ones. Appreciate what you've got while you have it.

Just home from the wake. Wish I could have stayed longer -- plenty of people I would have liked to talk or listen to more -- but as I am currently having a pretty intense nosebleed (one-handed typing), I think I gauged my body's point of refusal pretty accurately. There will be sleep.

When I left the wake, people were eating and drinking and laughing and crying and talking and sitting silently and playing music and singing and listening. People were, as far as I saw, being generous with each other and cutting each other slack for literal or metaphorical stepping on toes. It was good. It was what it ought to be, what it needed to be. But look, the thing was -- it smelled a bit like Mike at the wake. I'm a scent person -- those of you who know me well know that, know that I have a sense of how people smell even when I most of my time with them has been at literal arm's length -- and there were bits of things, the hard candies and the single-malts and other things that were parts of how he smelled. Good but hard; not something I've had at a memorial or funeral before. And with that and with all the conversation and music and things that were very Mike things, I kept having to remind my hindbrain not to expect him to walk in, not to think to see him any time soon. The love of sweethearts and friends and admirers and family members can't conjure any of us back when we've gone. It's not that kind of magic. Magic yes, but not that kind.

I sometimes hear people talking about funerals or memorials as a celebration of the life of the deceased. I think this means, among other things, I am supposed to be happy with the universe for having had as much Mike Ford as it did and not mad as hell at it that there wasn't more. I think I can manage both just now, actually. You don't have to be all that large to contain that fairly limited multitude. I'm also pretty sure which one wins in the long-run.