This morning my dear friend and second mother Linda died from a massive stroke. I will never talk to her again. I will never hear her laugh again. I will never hear her wry humor again. She will never meet my daughter Lizzie, nor will Lizzie ever meet this person who has been so important to me. She touched countless lives and genuinely made the world a better place. I miss my friend and grieve for her loss and her family’s loss. She went too young, at the age of only 63. It is suitably grey outside today.
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March 30, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Levi,
My deepest sympathies for your loss.
March 30, 2011 at 2:17 pm
It is times like these where language seems impossible, but you have my sincere and heartfelt sympathies. Good luck to you and yours.
March 30, 2011 at 3:19 pm
My condolences.
March 30, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Very sorry to hear that Levi,
The deepest of sympathies to you and her family.
March 30, 2011 at 4:54 pm
I’m extremely sorry to hear that, Levi.
My condolences.
March 30, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Dear Levi,
My dearest sympathies in this time of loss, to you and your family.
Daniel
March 30, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Even the best and wisest words sound trite, but I am very sorry, Levi.
March 31, 2011 at 12:52 am
I spent some portion of last evening reading about massive stroke, without knowing her name imagining how ferociously your second mother would have to fight to find her way back, wondering if it would be possible for her to do so given the severity of the damage that those words “life support” point to. And now she’s gone, and spared that arduous medical odyssey back to speech, communication, mobility, self-care, full independence, and dignity. And I want to know more about this woman who was so important to you, who supported your intellectual journey of exploration, whose input and support and cooking were worth driving across Ohio for! Please give us more Linda when you can—any little thing: what meals she fixed you at those Ohio dinners? What was her best dish or your favorite? Did she care if you ate your vegetables? Did she mark up her books and quote from them when you talked about science fiction together? Were you sitting together at the kitchen table, on the porch, in the backyard, flopped on a beanbag chair? Was her house plant-filled, light-filled, art-filled, music-filled? Were their prisms hanging in leaded windows, wind chimes, a bird-feeder? What did her smile look like? Was she quick to laugh? Did she have a pet name for you?
I imagine she’ll be there in the words and white spaces of The Democracy of Objects; I’ll be looking for her there anyway.
March 31, 2011 at 7:31 am
There’s the old saying about being a credit to your raising; the man you are is a credit to the boy Linda helped raise.
She helped you to become a man of ideas, and now she, herself, remains with you as an idea. As long as you carry her idea within you, she won’t be truly gone.
You have my sympathy for your loss and my hope that you will cherish what remains.
April 2, 2011 at 9:10 am
My condolences.
Rakis,
Greece