Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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Wow I called this one and I didn’t even know what the story intends to do.
I’m waiting for when they go to the police station and start to describe Terrance the police chief goes, “He sounds like someone we’ve been looking for for the past year. He escaped from a mental asylum”
I’ve been seeing a lot of this recently. Terrance isn’t insane. Yes, he lives in a world that is different from reality, but the only difference is that, in Terrance-world, Terrance is always right. He’s not nuts, he just never stops to double-check or reconsider, because there’s no need. He’s right, so why waste the time? Therefore, any time he seems to fail or be wrong, someone else must have sabotaged him. Probably someone he already has a low opinion of, therefore proving he was right to dislike them. And if anyone doesn’t like Terrance, clearly they’re either jealous or evil, because how could you not like Terrance? He’s great!
Exactly right.
Terrence isn’t insane.
Terrence is just THAT MUCH of an asshole.
Dunning-Kruger Effect…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I dunno… He’s pretty much dinged every box for narcissistic sociopathy. Even in your description of him.
I tend to shorthand that as ‘insane’. His brain does not work with facts, it works with some mumbo-jumbo it made up on the fly. That does not count as sanity from where I’m sitting.
@Viktor: I was using the phrase ‘mental asylum’ for a comedic effect, knowing that it is an extreme and derogatory term for those who are in need of professional help.
And yes I’ve known assholes and professional victims like Terrence. Short of electroshock therapy*, there isn’t that much one can do with them.
*Again an exaggeration for comedic effect
I’ve discovered the legal definition of actual insanity has one specific symptom that Terrance doesn’t seem to have manifested, hallucinations.