My dear high-school girlfriend, Sandy Whye, was my first fan and biggest supporter.  We were just broken kids, and our love was unable to overcome the wounds we carried with us into that relationship.  But the fondness and love remained, and we stayed in touch through the decades.

Today is the first anniversary of her sudden and unexpected death.

I was sad yesterday, and I woke up this morning kind of flat and washed out,.  Not devastated as I was when I first heard of her passing 12 months ago, and I figured this muted grayness was going to be the extent of my reaction to the date.  But as the workday went on, it felt like a cold winter …

Re-titling my webpage as “Roy M. Griffis – Storyteller” wasn’t done lightly.  But I felt honesty demanded it.   Novelist” or “Artist” seemed kind of pretentious, like  business resumes proclaiming “Thought-leader”.

See, I have all kinds of ideas.  Some work best as novels (about 13 – 15 of those in my head), some as screenplays (two or three of those kicking around in the subconscious), some as comic strips.  I’d like to think I’m not a slave to a genre or a niche: I’ve written historical fiction and slightly satiric alternative history.  There’s the filmscript about a man hunting the seductive female vampire that slew his wife, and I’ve won some awards for my short stories and plays.  …

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 …