This Is Not In Memoriam
One person who read this blog regularly, and reminded me when I hadn't posted anything in a while, won't be nudging me any more.
Writer, teacher, and all-around spectacular human being Pat York died in a car accident May 21st. You can Google around (skip past Pat York the photographer; that's not her), or just go straight to Cory Doctorow's tribute, or the SFWA eulogy, to read about her. This is not an obituary, or a remembrance, or a tribute. I want this to be a rant, but rants require singlemindedness and pinpoint focus. This is more a meander.
I've spent the last however many days it's been trying to make sense out of this in an assortment of ways. Strategy 1: Read everything I can find about the actual accident. Dissect it to figure out the exact sequence of events, diagram the forces at work, do the equations, try to put it all into a giant spreadsheet. Strategy 2: Read every word everyone has to say about Pat, and share my own stories of her with any stray person who will listen.
There are a bunch more after that. But ultimately, it's just a doomed quest: senseless death can't be pounded into a rational framework, no matter how big the sledgehammer. I know that; still doesn't stop me from trying.
And once the effort for rationality is spent, or at least worn down to the point where it clunks along halfheartedly, comes the quest for meaning.
Sorry, I can't find meaning in Pat's sudden death. I try. I tell myself little myths--Myth 1: If Pat had been told her daughter was going to die in an accident, she would have said, "Take me instead." Her daughter survived the accident. So maybe that's what happened. (Which of course begs the question of meaning in the potential death of her daughter.) Myth 2: Pat had just retired from teaching grammar school, a career she had loved and whose importance she was deeply devoted to. Without teaching, her life was deprived of its most meaningful aspect; she no longer had a reason to stick around. (Yeah, and the bus that plowed into the car knew that somehow. And her family had no need of her, nor her of it. The novel in progress? Pointless and unimportant that she finish it. The varieties of bullshit inherent in this myth are so many, so diverse, and so reeking with a giant heaping stench that even the most naive person must just boggle that the mind of an ostensibly intelligent person could come up with something so phenomenally stupid.)--because myth-making in search of meaning is something we humans do.
There is comfort to be had in myths, but they have to be good myths, not ridiculous myths like the examples above. Unfortunately, the sudden, accidental death of a loved one (which, I note as an aside, is usually taken to mean a family member--how constricting and just flat-out silly is to insist that the only people we love are the ones we're connected with by the accident of birth) doesn't yield to strong, comforting, meaningful myths because--SEE ABOVE--sudden, accidental death isn't exactly fraught with meaning. Life might have meaning--I don't know, I really don't--but death? Uh uh.
What it's fraught with is pain and emptiness and sadness. It just hurts. It makes some people cry, and hurt some more because the crying doesn't make it better, and other people wish they could cry, and hurt some more because they can't make the tears come. The things that normally blunt aches--activity, distraction, drink, drugs--don't change a damn thing.
Pat left us with tons of great memories--I've been hearing her voice, and particularly her infectious laugh, in my head all the time these past days. And she left lots of tangible things: in my case, she is part of the triumvirate of friends who pushed Rob and me together, and fed and nurtured our relationship until it could form its own strong roots. That is to say, I thank Pat (and Cynther and Janis) for the love of my life, the person I depend on every day. (And I sure have been leaning on him a lot this week.) She also introduced me to many other great people, and gave me encouragement and feedback and moral support as a writer. She listened to me bitch and whine (two special talents of mine that go underappreciated for some reason). She drank wine with me at the picnic table at Gibraltar Point every day at 5. Lots of other cool stuff came by way of Pat.
Her death gave me a powerful kick in the gut right around the time I was beginning to wonder if I had lost the ability to feel much of anything. It dragged me out of my emotional cocoon and brought a lot of friends together, reminding us all to cherish each other today because you never know about tomorrow.
Sorry, none of that grants meaning, or sense, to her death. I still just want Pat not to be dead.
Writer, teacher, and all-around spectacular human being Pat York died in a car accident May 21st. You can Google around (skip past Pat York the photographer; that's not her), or just go straight to Cory Doctorow's tribute, or the SFWA eulogy, to read about her. This is not an obituary, or a remembrance, or a tribute. I want this to be a rant, but rants require singlemindedness and pinpoint focus. This is more a meander.
I've spent the last however many days it's been trying to make sense out of this in an assortment of ways. Strategy 1: Read everything I can find about the actual accident. Dissect it to figure out the exact sequence of events, diagram the forces at work, do the equations, try to put it all into a giant spreadsheet. Strategy 2: Read every word everyone has to say about Pat, and share my own stories of her with any stray person who will listen.
There are a bunch more after that. But ultimately, it's just a doomed quest: senseless death can't be pounded into a rational framework, no matter how big the sledgehammer. I know that; still doesn't stop me from trying.
And once the effort for rationality is spent, or at least worn down to the point where it clunks along halfheartedly, comes the quest for meaning.
Sorry, I can't find meaning in Pat's sudden death. I try. I tell myself little myths--Myth 1: If Pat had been told her daughter was going to die in an accident, she would have said, "Take me instead." Her daughter survived the accident. So maybe that's what happened. (Which of course begs the question of meaning in the potential death of her daughter.) Myth 2: Pat had just retired from teaching grammar school, a career she had loved and whose importance she was deeply devoted to. Without teaching, her life was deprived of its most meaningful aspect; she no longer had a reason to stick around. (Yeah, and the bus that plowed into the car knew that somehow. And her family had no need of her, nor her of it. The novel in progress? Pointless and unimportant that she finish it. The varieties of bullshit inherent in this myth are so many, so diverse, and so reeking with a giant heaping stench that even the most naive person must just boggle that the mind of an ostensibly intelligent person could come up with something so phenomenally stupid.)--because myth-making in search of meaning is something we humans do.
There is comfort to be had in myths, but they have to be good myths, not ridiculous myths like the examples above. Unfortunately, the sudden, accidental death of a loved one (which, I note as an aside, is usually taken to mean a family member--how constricting and just flat-out silly is to insist that the only people we love are the ones we're connected with by the accident of birth) doesn't yield to strong, comforting, meaningful myths because--SEE ABOVE--sudden, accidental death isn't exactly fraught with meaning. Life might have meaning--I don't know, I really don't--but death? Uh uh.
What it's fraught with is pain and emptiness and sadness. It just hurts. It makes some people cry, and hurt some more because the crying doesn't make it better, and other people wish they could cry, and hurt some more because they can't make the tears come. The things that normally blunt aches--activity, distraction, drink, drugs--don't change a damn thing.
Pat left us with tons of great memories--I've been hearing her voice, and particularly her infectious laugh, in my head all the time these past days. And she left lots of tangible things: in my case, she is part of the triumvirate of friends who pushed Rob and me together, and fed and nurtured our relationship until it could form its own strong roots. That is to say, I thank Pat (and Cynther and Janis) for the love of my life, the person I depend on every day. (And I sure have been leaning on him a lot this week.) She also introduced me to many other great people, and gave me encouragement and feedback and moral support as a writer. She listened to me bitch and whine (two special talents of mine that go underappreciated for some reason). She drank wine with me at the picnic table at Gibraltar Point every day at 5. Lots of other cool stuff came by way of Pat.
Her death gave me a powerful kick in the gut right around the time I was beginning to wonder if I had lost the ability to feel much of anything. It dragged me out of my emotional cocoon and brought a lot of friends together, reminding us all to cherish each other today because you never know about tomorrow.
Sorry, none of that grants meaning, or sense, to her death. I still just want Pat not to be dead.
posted by Maines at 12:45 AM
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