My Dad, and my Patreon
I started a Patreon some time ago and haven’t been tending it all that well, but I’m working on improving that. I’ve written some bits recently about my dad’s November 2016 death (he was trendy that way), and would of course love some more supporters over in that corner. Here’s a taste of the raw writing I did after that happened. If you’d care to support my efforts at finally putting a novel together for real, please head over. Every $1 helps. Thanks.
Tolstoy had it wrong when he said that all happy families were alike, and unhappy families were unhappy in their own way. Grief, it turned out, took very much the same shape no matter who you were or how strangely your loved one died. Maybe you didn’t do exactly the same things; maybe you didn’t feel exactly the same feelings. But you moved as if through molasses, experiencing everything as not-quite-real. You felt the need to do something, to take care of your responsibilities, but everything you tried took five times as long as usual, until you gave up in a heap under a blanket. You ate too much or too little, you drank too much and slept too much and cried at seemingly nothing. You were mean to people you usually liked and had a lot less patience for people you hated. Grief clouds everything and yet brings a kind of brutal clarity, too: all at once, you know what is really important, what can wait indefinitely, what you know you will return to as soon as you are able, and what you wish to discard forever. You know, with a sharpness that threatens to cut you apart, what you must do to make it so that your own life will have been worth something.
