I’ve rarely ever written much of a very personal nature here, and I’m still not sure I want to now. But I’ve experienced a loss so profound that I feel I have to at least note the fact of it, whether or not I end up writing more about it than this. I want to get back to posting whether I liked this book, or that beer, or how my writing is going, but how can I, after this?
Anyway, it’s this: in the early-morning hours of Friday, July 30, our 23-year-old daughter Mary was killed in a car crash here in Austin. She was a passenger, and the car she was in was hit by a reckless driver. Dumbfoundingly, the other three occupants of her car were fine, but she never regained consciousness. The at-fault driver also died, after more than a week on life support.
A week after the accident we held a memorial service for her, in the morning. That afternoon we got the news that my (unvaccinated) brother-in-law had lost his weeks-long battle with Covid-19. A week later we were attending his funeral.
That was four weeks ago yesterday, and I don’t think I could put this unimaginable hell into words even if I wanted to. There are at least occasional periods of time now that are bearable, and even, every now and then, a faint glimmer of being able to give the tiniest fuck about life or the future. That’s progress, I suppose.
One thing I did (god knows how; I barely remember it) was make a simple system by which those of us who miss her can send texts to a special phone number (Twilio, natch) that then get published to a website (Micro.blog) and cross-posted to a social media network (Twitter, yuck, but that’s where her friends are). The messages are here, with a detailed explanation here; Micro.bloggers can follow her through @maryg and Twitter folk can find the crossposts on @WeMissUMary. I hope/plan to publish the Node.js source at some point; there is a lot of room for improvement.
Other things are going on, too. It’s bizarre and frankly more than a little rude how life continues on, good and bad, despite this level of debilitating tragedy. But maybe now I can post a mention of those things here and not feel like I’m pretending this didn’t happen.
For a start: I liked this book, and that beer, and my writing was a finalist in a contest. Big damn deal.
