Archive for Death

Today’s anniversaries

Today is the 43rd anniversary of my mother’s death. And today would’ve been my father’s 84th birthday. (It’s been nearly 19 years since he was killed.) I’m musing about what they might be like if they were still alive. It’s not so hard for me to imagine Peter at 84; I’m sure he would’ve continued […]

Hamas and Israel

In our current social climate, it can be difficult to express dismay about atrocities and war crimes perpetrated by one organization or government without coming across as a partisan of an opposing one. For example, expressing dismay about Hamas killing people can easily come across as Islamophobic, or anti-Palestinian, or settler-colonialist; and expressing dismay about […]

R.I.P. Ellie the dog

Content warning: Pet death. Mary Anne and Kevin had to put their dog Ellie to sleep yesterday. I’ve known Ellie since she arrived in M and K’s lives in 2006 or so. She wasn’t my dog, but she and I got along very well for most of that time. (Her name was really Elinor, but […]

Canadian residential schools, and donation suggestions

Content warning for discussion of the Canadian residential schools and other horrific anti-Indigenous behavior by governments. Background: For over 100 years, the Canadian government funded boarding schools that it forced 150,000 Indigenous children to go to. The schools were administered by various Christian churches. At least 2%, and possibly as many as 20%, of those […]

Anniversaries

My father would’ve been 81 years old today. And today is the 40th anniversary of my mother’s death. This is often a rough time of year for me because of those anniversaries, but this year I seem to be more or less okay. Shoulders tense, a little irritable, not sleeping well. But mostly fine. (Though […]

Fifteen years

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s murder. (For anyone who doesn’t know what happened and wants to know, here’s the writeup that I posted in 2006, on the first anniversary. Content warning for a fairly detailed discussion of his murder, and a brief discussion of his SO Nancy’s suicidal depression.) (…Something that I […]

The anniversary that I missed

(Content warning for discussion of a suicide.) A little under two weeks ago, around the start of Labor Day Weekend, I had an anxiety spike, which was made worse a couple days later by various things around the statement from the Tiptree Motherboard about the award’s name. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why […]

14 years

Today is the 14th anniversary of my father’s death. I’ve been mostly okay the past few days, but kind of fragile and mood-swingy. Have gotten some important overdue stuff done at work this week, but have also had multiple instances of getting too anxious to read specific emails and thus ending up being later than […]

More on Ellison

Some thoughts and notes about Harlan Ellison, in no particular order, on the occasion of his death. Content warning: I’m going to say some positive things about him as well as some critical things; if either of those will distress you, then you may not want to read this post right now. He was capable […]

Ellison’s Angry Candy introduction

One of the first things I thought of on learning that Harlan Ellison died this morning was the introduction he wrote to his 1988 short-story collection Angry Candy. It’s a powerful piece about the deaths of forty-plus people who he cared about and admired, over the course of a couple of years in the mid-1980s. […]