   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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For some reason, the reason I will never volunteer to run a con website again comes to mind… 🙂
rule one of graphic arts/coding: never work for free, Don’t have to charge em a lot (i mean i’d do it for 1-5% over cost which is a major pay cut) but NEVER WORK FOR FREE!
because if you charge them they won’t ask for the stupid/impossible
And they’ll recall you exist. I was once asked to do a website, set up the whole framework, and asked the chairman et al for content. Bupkis for two months followed by a phone call “Hey, I just found someone to run the website!” He’d completely forgotten about the whole thing… So I said “that’s nice”, scrubbed the protosite, and never offered to do one for that con again.
This would be a good way to maybe ask Unagi Con to pay some of Bork Con’s lost cash.
By the way, now that you mention it he has showed up. It’s kind of funny because he was always a background character and now he is in a pickle and oddly enough at the mercy of Lynn.