Things Jay Lake Told Me

We lost Jay Lake on June 1st. A lot of us, as it turns out. And yet we each lost our own personal Jay. Not quite the same critter as the next missing-Jay sufferer.

Me, I lost a friend who gave me some things no one else ever had, who held my hands and my confidences gently.

A lot has been said about him in the time since, but a few things haven't been said yet and I'd like to say them.

Jay believed in love, yes. But he also believed in touch and sex and adamantly and passionately believed that there was nothing wrong with either.

One day when he was visiting me, I turned on the tape recorder and got him going on various subjects, which wasn't hard to do.

Jay liked to talk. It was one of the many things he did well.

About people and how to treat them:

"Way too many people don't get listened to, or experience kindness, or touch. If you pay attention and you're nice about it and you gently offer touch, it's amazing how people respond."

About sex and death:

"We are put on this earth to do two things: fuck off and die.

"We fuck off to make more of ourselves, and we die to get out of their way. Since we only get to die once, we may as well work on the fucking-off as much as we can."

I laughed at this. He smiled and added, "I'm saying that funny, but I really do believe it."

And he did. Among the things I learned from Jay was that there are lots of ways to do sex.

Now that he's gone, I realize he also showed me there are a lot of ways to die. His way was to leave it all on the table.

Or to take it all off the table.

"Two of the greatest things in life are sex and food. Sensory input. I approach them similarly."

Sensuality. The stuff of life. He wanted it all.

The morning Jay died I went into a cafe and got myself a large cup of whipped cream. I drank it to his memory.

One day, many years ago -- pre-cancer -- I was complaining to Jay about something or another in my life.

You do your best, he told me.

No, that's not what he said at all. What he said was this:

"Here’s a twenty sided die, a jar of anchovies, an accordion, and a lug wrench. Good luck."

He meant that we go forward with the tools we have. Maybe not quite the tools we'd hoped for. Maybe not even sufficiently good tools. But they're the tools we've got. So use them, he meant.

The gifts Jay gave me - his love, his insights - are among my best tools.

Along with the twenty-sided die, of course, which I keep handy for those occasions when I'm without a jar of anchovies, an accordion, or a lug wrench.

"The entropy of the universe tends toward the maximum. Our role as human beings is to stand against that tendency."

And he did.

I'd like to think that through those of us who remain, missing him and loving him, he still does.

"Love while you can, live as you must."


Yes.

Today We Remain

Death is awfully present in my life these days. A dear friend is dying. He's got stunningly good grace about it, but that's cold comfort. For him, for us. Frankly, the whole thing sucks. The dying, that is. His writing on the subject is impressive stuff.

It occurs to me, and this is probably obvious to you, that if you live long enough, everyone around you dies.  Beloved companion animals. Humans you can't live without. One day they're there, sensible and solid, saying things you couldn't make up if you tried, and then the next -- gone. Gone and done. Why is this so mystifying to me?

The math is clear: either you die, or you live on and those around you die. If you die, you (probably) don't have to face them dying, but otherwise, well, you do. Short of somehow managing to, say, drop an asteroid on yourself and everyone you know all at once (and if you have that kind of power let's talk--I promise to be very polite) either you go or they do.

Someone has to leave first. It can't happen any other way.

I don't know why this equation befuddles me. I feel like a child who can't understand simple single-digit arithmetic.

From what I can tell, most people don't face Death with much awareness. Whether because we're surprised, mentally altered, on meds, in pain, or in denial, most of us aren't very conscious of impending demise. Across the spectrum of human experience, we are primarily aware of others dying.

The point? The longer we live, the more it seems that Death follows us around, cutting down those near us. But that's only because Death hasn't yet put a hand on our shoulder. There's a wretched arithmetic to surviving those you love: someone has to remain.

Today, at least, I remain. As I watch those I love leave -- and prepare to leave -- I am reminded of how hard--how wrenching, how confusing--it is to be among those who remain.

Reflections on Death, God, and Sunshine

A friend of mine, a software engineer, faced the death of two loved ones in a single month. It was a rough time. She told me this:

"I'd like to file a bug report. In fact, I'd like to switch to a competitor's universe."

That reminds me of one of my favorite Terry Pratchett quotes, in which he says that the presumed extant Supreme Being seems to be lacking a moral compass.

I once asked a Sufi teacher "Does God exist?" His reply: "yes, but bear in mind that he loves mosquitoes just as much as he loves you."

And lastly, this from my dental hygienist: "Life's not fair. But the sun's come out."

"Sorry" doesn't change it

I've been using email longer than almost anyone I know, thanks to an early career on the net. There are some email subject lines that I've come to view with a certain amount of gravity.

The first is a person's name. It almost always means they're dead.

The second is "Sorry." This isn't always a suicide note, but recently that's just what it was.

There's something especially agonizing about losing someone to suicide. The pain ripples out in circles around the person to family, friends, communities. It affects far more people than they could possibly have guessed.

Every time I'm touched by a suicide, I want to reach out to all the people in my circles, just in case they might be thinking that way. I want to say this:

Friend, I don't dispute your right to check out early. Your body and consciousness belongs to you as much as anything can. I know life can be some hard shit, and yes, there are times to consider bailing.

But I want you to know something first.

People will suffer. You killing yourself causes deep emotional pain in more people than you realize. Even if you're considerate and avoid leaving blood on the walls, even with your thoughtful final instructions and that nice note about how it's not our fault -- even then, my friend, suicide is a violent, shocking, and brutal act.

We take the loss of you hard. Far more of us will be affected than you suspect. We'll be angry. We'll be hurt. Some will hurt a lot. Some our whole lives.

Given that you're considering throwing it all out anyway, I'm asking you to consider some other answers first. You think you've tried it all, but a sudden exit is evidence you haven't. Instead, throw out your career, your city, your clothes, your assumptions. Shake it up. Why not?

Listen, I've been where you're standing. I'm don't claim to know your pain, but I've stood at the edge of the cliff and looked over. I found other ways.

So I ask you to look for other ways. Find someone who understands. Ask for help. Take new risks. Seek out cohorts. Even meds. Why not? You've given up all other approaches anyway, right?

It's your choice, of course. But if you decide to take your life, be very clear that you're also taking parts of other people's lives with you. Being sorry doesn't change that.

An Adventure in Terror

I don't know what I was thinking.

Actually, yes, I do. I was thinking I didn't like my choices. To me skiing is uncontrolled falling down a frozen mountainside, hurtling toward trees and humans who don't get out of the way. "Tubing" isn't much better and sounds vaguely dirty.

I considered the zip-line forest tour. Online comments included: "amazing!", "so much fun!" and "do it!" But flying through the air in a Canadian winter? Sounds cold. Skip it.

But then while packing I realize I have some excellent winter clothes. It dawns on me that the cold problem is solvable. And I do like trees and forest.

That's how, when at the last minute there is a cancellation, I end up on the zipline tour. What am I thinking as I get into the van to go up into the mountains? That I've solved the cold problem. With layers. Clever, me.

We walk into the woods under towering snow-clad hemlock pines. We cross a swaying ice-encrusted bridge between two tall trees. It's a bit high up, I realize, looking over the side. But at least I'm not cold.

Our first platform is built around a 150 year-old hemlock pine with bark rippled like frozen rivers. Very pretty. I look over the edge. The ground is far away. Very far away.

The plan is this: the guide clips your harness to a metal line connecting our tree platform to another one. He opens a gate and you step off into space. The zipline catches your weight. Gravity accelerates you down and then across hundreds or thousands of feet of open air to the other platform. You see the forest in a unique way. Like a bird. It's tons of fun, we're told.

I look over the edge again. I don't feel so good.

It turns out there are two sorts of people in the world. Those who think heights are cool and do things like parachuting and ziplines, and those who know heights are not cool and don't. My group is made up of the first sort. A bit nervious maybe, but no one is going into a full-blown panic. Except maybe me.

I've done ropes courses. Even a bit of ziplining. But somehow the memory of how petrified I was has vanished until this moment. What the hell had I been thinking when I signed up for this?

That I would be cold. Having solved that problem, I had somehow missed the other now quite urgent problem: I am about to die.

"Hey," I say to John, one of our two guides. "I'm thinking of bailing. What do I need to do to get out of here?"

"Oh," he says in his heavy English accent, "you'll be fine!"

"Seriously," I say. "I don't want to do this. I didn't realize it would be so --"  I know I sound like an idiot now but that's okay. Idiot compares well to dying. "So high."

"The next one's a bit higher," he admits, "but you'll be fine! A woman on this morning's run was as scared as you are and she was fine."

I don't bother asking how he can possibly know how scared I am. I look over the edge again. This is insane. It's hard to think clearly through my primal, unreasoning terror. My lizard brain is screaming.

"Ah, just give it a try!" John says. "You'll like it!"

I'm pretty sure he's wrong.

The group is going now. Clip on, step off into air. A loud buzzing "zzzzippp-pah!" sound. "Next!" John calls brightly.

I want to throw up. I want to grip the railing and never let go.

"I don't think I can do this," I tell one of the remaining guys. Only much later do I realize that my ability to speak sensibly despite being wretchedly sick with terror is giving the erroneous impression that I'm actually okay.

"Perfectly safe," he says unhelpfully.

"I know. I just don't think I can do it. I'm really scared."

I can bail on this, I remind myself. Sure, it's trouble for the guides, but that's their problem. Mine is staying alive.

"Well," he asks, "what are you scared of?"

Good question. If I'm going to bail, I decide, I want to know why. Quick, like a racecar mechanic, I take my mindset apart.

It's not the safety; I can see how the harness and redundant clip system works, and the process is pretty safe. It's not the accelleration either, which, while impressive, is no worse than an airplane taking off, something I regularly risk and actually enjoy.

It's the height. If this were 10 or 20 feet off the ground, as I absurdly imagined, I'd be okay. It's the stepping off into 80 feet of empty air from a perfectly good platform. I try to reason with my lizard brain, but it's having none of that. An horrific future awaits, it tells me.

One by one my group goes -- zipppp-pah! -- off to the other side.

I'm a software engineer. I like to solve problems. What's going on in my head is a problem. I don't have time to fix it but can I make a fast patch? A few moments later I have a plan. I still don't want to do this but I do want to see if my brain-hack workaround will fly. So to speak.

And my time's up. Step up or bail. I walk to the gate and John clips me onto the line. Now the patch: I shut my eyes and imagine the ground only 10 feet down. My lizard brain is screaming so I do it again. It doesn't believe me, but it can't see anything with our eyes closed, so it can't be sure.

In that split-second of plausibility, I bend my knees, feel the harness catch, and step forward into air.

I go. Down and fast. I want to see, so I open my eyes. There's forest sailing by and snow covered land 100 feet below. I'm okay, and oddly, no longer terrified. I was right: it was the step off the platform, not the ride. The brain-hack worked.

The next platform starts higher, some 160 feet up, and I'm freshly terrified. So we -- my lizard brain and I -- go through it again: eyes closed, visualize, step forward. Again, enroute, I look around. A river snakes through deep snow banks. Trees fly past. I come to the other side.

It gets easier each time. Not easy, but easier. On the final zip I step off with my eyes open to see if I can. Someone takes a picture.

While I wouldn't call it fun there's something powerfully satisfying about pushing through impassable terror with a brain-hack I built myself, on-the-spot. That's some cool real-world engineering.

As we're driving down the mountain I realize something else: I wasn't cold. Not once. FTW.

The SMS-Driving Test

"When you forbid things, people (especially young people) want to do them even more."

Smart words from Axel Druart, the European Project Director for Responsible Young Drivers. So he arranged a driving class for some young adults in which they were told they had to drive and text simultaneously, to get their licenses.

Here's the video. It's two minutes and fifteen seconds well worth watching. Heck, it's even funny.

"People will die" says one dismayed student.

Exactly.

Pass it on.

Words to a Grieving Widow

There are no good words. None at all. So we hugged.

"I'm sorry," I whispered in her ear. "So sorry."

"I know," she replied softly, not letting me go.

"I know you know," I said back quietly. "But I have to say something."

"I know," she said, still hugging me.

It was a bit funny and a lot heartrending. Nearly twenty years we'd been friends,  she and her recently departed -- lost? died? exited stage left? -- husband.

Who was irreverent and affectionate. He used to call me "darlin'". He was a damned good writer and one of the few I've known who I wanted to write with.

In fact, mere months ago we started riffing on a story we wanted to write together, about a PI who was following this guy who kept flubbing ornate assassinations. The story was about how, after a while, the PI became fascinated by and sympathetic to the guy he was following, and as he started to understand his motivations, began to even help him -- help him fail, that is. It was a good premise, funny, and just the sort of thing that Mark could make come alive.

It was a good time. A good memory.

So what do you say to a grieving widow? What words can do any good in the face of a pain so great it is neither bearable nor escapable? There aren't any. Not a one.

But you have to say them anyway.

I'm sorry.

So sorry.

These Things Happen

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, I took a cantaloupe-sized green egg away from a father whose kind has been unchanged for some 80 million years.  I was nervous, because he weighted nearly as much as I did, and had claws far longer and sharper than mine. And besides which, he was a parent and I was only hoping to be one with his stolen child, which I imagined gave him an advantage.

But he was confused, new to the game, not really that concerned, and I stepped past him easily enough and took the small pipping green egg, this hatchling critter who, when she was finally free of the hard shell, fit easily into the palm of my one hand.

I raised her inside for months until she was big enough, then outside in a greenhouse. She was beautiful, of course, and smelled fabulous to me, with my mother's eyes and nose.

When I left that far-off land, I left her in the care of both new human parents and the parents of her own kind. Knowing she was well was enough.

She died today, at five and a half years old.  It happened suddenly, mysteriously, in her sleep. These things happen.

Having recently been through the death of a beloved fur-child that was not sudden, not mysterious, and not fast, I do see the advantages in this quick transition.

And yet, and yet. It is not all that much easier.

But these things happen.

The Prince of Cats

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

--Kahlil Gibran

Splendid journey, my Beloved. Dance and sing in grace.

"Every world spins in pain"

Today I'm watching my cat die from kidney disease. He's hurting and nauseated. Hiding it admirably well, even by feline standards.

I'm reminded of a quote from Terry Pratchett:

"I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log.

"As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children.

"And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

Goodbye, Dear Sir

Today a man I admire, respect and care for lies in the hospital dying.

I never heard him complain over the years. Not once. I was always impressed with that. Not when they took out his spinal fluid to irradiate it and put it back, not during chemo, surgery, and not when his heart stopped working, not when his brain stumbled. Each time he'd just - come back, step by step, as if it were something anyone could do. He'd shrug as he described his trials, as if the surgery or chemo were a small thing.  An inconvenience. A minor detour.

He was easy to admire, and it was easy to think he'd keeping beating Death.

This time, it seems not.

Across the years, when I'd see him, he would hug me with a sort of fierceness and a smile, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am a scientist, but also I believe in you."

The tears of grief are for we who remain in life, not for them, the dead. Where do the dead go, that I can wish this man well?  That I can send something, some final appreciation, some bit of love?

Goodnight to you, dear sir. I hope there is something on the other side, something good and wonderful, because imaging you gone forever is almost more than I can bear.

Write Some Letters

Winter makes me think about death.  Or Death, if you prefer the anthropomorphic personification.

If you will indulge me for a moment, imagine that you are, quite suddenly, quite dead.  Consider those people you hang around the most, those who will be most wrenched by the sudden loss of you.

Now, don't you wish you'd written a final letter, or made a video saying goodbye?  A final message, saying farewell as only you can?

It's not that hard. Just write down the things you want them to know, the things you wished you would have said (only now you can!) while you were alive. You can give advice. You can tell them to go on without you. You can remind them to floss.

You can say "I love you."

To me this sounded like a New Year's resolution that could actually make a difference. So I did it.

Have you? If not, why not?  It doesn't take long.  It's easy to do.  Yes, it can be a bit emotional, but think about it: do you really want to leave without having the final word?  I bet you don't.

Cold. On Bike.

I was riding the motor bike today, and it was cold, oh very very cold. "Short spring this year" someone said, and I laughed. There was sun, but it was cold. Then it snowed. And hailed.

Every time I get on the bike I am reminded how easy it is to kill myself by being stupid. Just one extra rev, a poorly thought out turn, my balance wrong, a driver turning left without looking, and I am rag-doll splatter.

But I get on anyway, helmet, jacket and gloves, and do that thing that I do. Why? Because, well. I don't quite know. It feels right. Maybe because it reminds me how easy it is to die. On the bike, or not.

Life. Death. Snow and hail.

And sun. Don't forget the sun.