So we're getting this whole memorial thing down really well here in Seattle dammit. January, for Anna, today, Buz. Darn we're good, organized, and…sad.

Buz's wife Elinor, along with others, had brought photo albums and had posted some pictures on some easels and such and had left the albums to leaf through. I was okay. Mostly. Then it started; pictures of folks at conventions from oh, like the mid-late 70s, when I started in fandom. Lots of folks who are still friends and who I see, or know of; there were a couple shots of Suzy Charnas, whose book I recently reviewed, Lizzy Lynn, whose most recent book I ALSO just read, and of Young Dick Lupoff. And Bob Silverberg who is SO easy to spot. But maybe it was the nature of the occasion that I zeroed in on the dead folks. I'm not THAT depressive, and I don't go looking. Maybe it was that I was starting to hurt - been a bad couple of days - but seeing picture of old friends, LONG gone, man, I was starting to feel a little, what, resentful? Long time gone, shit. It WAS nice to realize that I simply HAD that many friends, that I'd been in science fiction fandom going on 30 years and that I went BACK with some of these folks that long; pictures of people I'd met in '77, '78 (including, well, folks like Dick Lupoff) but seeing photos of people who were actually in my life only a very short time was a kick in the pants. It became clear to me that the friend we were honoring, Buz, was someone who just was THERE one day. You know how that is? No idea when you met someone, try to think about it and he's simply always BEEN there, it seems? But Susan Wood and Bill Broxon? Susan died in 1980. I knew her what, three years? Ridiculous. It was Susan who introduced me, back in the '70s to the work of Margaret Atwood and Robinson Davies, for crying out loud. And Randall Garrett. Man. There were loads of other pictures, including some shots of people I haven't seen in ages and gotta hope they're doing well - folks like Grant Canfield and Anet Mconel, but there were lots of folks like of Terry Carr and Bill Rotsler, people I met very early in my s.f. fannish "career", even my ex- husband whose been gone for more than 20 years. I'm not sensing mortality, especially, but wishing I could turn this around perhaps to relfect on the richness of the folks I've known, the wide net of friends I've made instead of seeing a photo and thinking "oh shit".

I dunno where I'm going with this. Certainly rejoicing in my friendships but in part, maybe, missing a life I once had, or at least some of the people in it. A life in which it was unheard of, if that makes sense of a sort, that people died. When death was more of a stunner, a shock, and a little less commonplace. I'm NOT saying people don't die in my world, just could it let up for a while?

I think it's time for cookies and ice cream and doing my Scarlett bit about how "tomorrow is another day." I CAN tell you that it was NOT the right thing to do to come home and pick up a book by Ken Bruen. I'm not sure that in a MONTH full of fluffy bunny days I could handle his depressive stuff, but today was certainly NOT the right day.