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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Please don’t end your decade-long series with a mass shooting.
I try to avoid spoilers in my responses — but I can promise you 100% that there will be no in-strip mass shooting.
It’s just on my mind a lot these days.
A horrible possibility… statistically not a very likely one, but no less horrible for it.
Sadly, not as statistically unlikely as anyone would like.
Was running some numbers…. each year your chances of being injured by a gun are roughly 1 in 3704… or a 0.027% chance. Which on the one hand seems a small chance. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure i know over 3700 people. Not well, but know them. Meaning there’s a pretty decent chance, every year, someone I know will get shot. Maybe not killed, but injured by a gun.
Though things get skewed in that a lot of people I know aren’t in the US, so they’re almost certainly safer. 675 times safer if they happen to be in Japan.