My mother passed away at 1240 am on Friday, April 25.

It was a mercy, as she had been struggling with dementia for years and had barely been able to recognize anyone in the final months.

Physically, she had been in good shape until the very end.  My father worked very hard to keep her in their home of over 30 years and he cared for her with great attentiveness and love.

My brother moved to within two miles of their home, and he visited her almost every day, giving my father some breaks and looking after them both.

His dedication was commendable and heroic.

I was able to be there on her last day.  She was on hospice, and …

…that I think it’s important to praise excellence.  To spread the word about creative achievement.  In a word, we must

Pimp the good stuff, my people!

But I digress.

My wife is likely fighting the Wuhan Virus.  So we have spent time inside this weekend.  And we watched a delightful, accomplished, and exceedingly fine film called Emma.  Released in 2020, it’s a sumptuous, funny, sweet, and ultimately very moving adaptation of a Jane Austen novel.

Not an Austen purist myself, I’ve never read the source material.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the film and as soon as it is available on BluRay, it will be mine.

Currently, it can be streamed on Amazon Prime, and this …

…when you realize that anything you’ve mailed from your home office in the last 20 years probably had cat hair stuck to it somewhere.

…

And it has viciously kicked my ass most of this month.

Grief turned out to be kind of a reverse Trojan Horse:  it detonated in might and power and inevitability like Shiva the Destroyer, but there were gifts (perhaps even a kind of rebirth) to be found in the rubble.

The most gut-wrenching part of the loss has started to subside and, to almost no one’s surprise, I will write more about it later.

In other writing news, my High-School English teacher and I reconnected this summer after losing touch for a few years.  She was a tremendous educator and I was so blessed to have her in my confused young life as a High School Senior.   She …

Below, my mostly squared away desk, including the keyboard tray I made from original house baseboards.

I feel like I’ll be able to start writing again, now.  I’ve found a cluttered desk is the death to productivity.  Read up on it, apparently your brain feels like it needs to check everything in the environment before it can focus on the task at hand.

Or, it’s a hold over from my Coast Guard days, when I had to have my Rescue Swimmer gear organized so I could find life-saving equipment at a moment’s notice in the dark, while dripping wet and slightly hypothermic myself.

Speaking of those days, here is a class photo from Coast Guard Aviation Survivalman School.

 …

….summed up in one photo.  Make of it what you will.…