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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Run. Run now. Run fast.
Resign before you become an enabler.
Had something similar happen at a meeting. 4 hours of heated debate over an expense on some stage lights. And a newbie staffer finally pipes up: “How many of those lights do you need? I’ve got 4 of them in the truck right now that I was about to take to Goodwill.”
I’m not sure what’s wrong with them but I really hope it’s not contagious.
When I was at Marvel Comics, in the mailroom, I learned how to set type. I was then a typesetter for about 20 years before losing my last job to a takeover and liquidation. I remember at one point, the typesetter AT Marvel (the guy who taught me) talked about the time they were discussing updating from the Compuwriter IV (OLD school typesetting) to a Compugraphic CTRonic (100% digital). Someone suggested they just get RID of the typesetting department and replace it with a terminal where they would lease computer time on a mainframe. They debated this for two hours before someone crunched the numbers and discovered the the mainframe leasing would cost MORE than just updating the equipment and getting supplies!