Good Night, Christina

Tea: Jasmine Vanilla

Music: Newsboys, "Entertaining Angels"

Time: Night.

Andrew Wyeth died today.

I do believe, as a friend says, that "One death is all deaths." But for me, the meaning of that statement changes when an artist dies.

The work lives on, of course (and often shoots up in price, which makes collectors happy). And it's not that artists are more intrinsically valuable than other people. But the unique vision behind the art is gone -- and that can be neither reproduced nor replaced.

Finally ...

Tea: Christmas

Music: Yes, "Hearts"

Time: Night

Got a new Internet provider today. Apparently Blogspot likes it better than it liked my last one. I'll give it a go for a couple of days, see how things go. I'd love to not have to export the archives to another host, y'know?

Anyway ... I've got some catching up to do. I'm not even going to attempt to reconstitute my days since the last post, but I'll do my best in subsequent days to recapture whatever insights came to me over that span.

Today, I got word that a former sports editor of my hometown paper -- a job I also held for a while -- died last weekend of cancer. He was my first real writing mentor, and beyond that he was (although we didn't always get along) my friend.

It's knocked a lot out of my head, save one thought that stays with me:

When I die, will anyone remember me as a mentor -- and of what?

Too much for me to think about now. I'm going to take a deep sniff of something that smells really good, just to remind myself how good it feels to be alive and have all my senses.

The catching-up starts tomorrow, God and Blogspot willing.

Voiceless

Tea: Blackcurrant

Music: Twisted Sister, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

Time: Night.

Long absence, I know. Death (my wife's other grandmother), illness (mine) and fatigue (ditto).

And tonight, the microphone on my cell phone went out. Not the earpiece, mind you, only the mic. So while I can hear, I cannot speak.

I readily acknowledge that I could be a better listener, but this is ridiculous. And besides, there are words I would say that I can't. And while sometimes that's a good thing, this isn't one of those times.

Aren't They All?

Tea: Arctic Storm

Music: King Crimson, "Starless"

Time: Night

This will be short. My leg hurts (the price of playing football past whatever passed for my prime) and it's been a semi-rough night.

With most members of my church's youth group off on a mission trip, and their director overseeing the endeavor, it fell to me tonight to run the show for those who stayed behind (six kids, five of them seventh-grade girls.)

Before the short lesson, on forgiveness and thankfulness, I got to tell them that one of the girls who went on the mission trip is now without a mother. She was found dead in her car last night.

I don't know details, and I'm not going to speculate on what happened. The senior pastor described the circumstances as "tragic" -- but really, isn't any death that leaves an adolescent motherless tragic?

Isn't each death a tragedy, or the culmination of one?

Back to the Scrabble Board (Just Not Yet)

Tea: Vanilla Chai

Music: Dresden Dolls, "Half Jack"

Time: Night.

I have played Scrabble once in the nine and a half years since my father died.

(We used to have epic battles, lasting hours. He'd always hoard the "Q," and I'd stash the "U" tiles. When he died, I buried the "Q" with him -- but, of course, I didn't send a "U" along with it.

The one time I played, since he died, was on a coffeehouse board. We got down to the end of the game: No "Q." I swear I could hear him laughing.

Today, my 15-year-old son pulled a game pack out of storage. Guess what's in there?

Yep -- a Scrabble set. A full one, no tiles missing.

I think it might be about time to play again ... about time to focus on what's possible with the living instead of what was lost to death.