Trial, Errors, and New Ways of Grieving

I know my post looked odd last night. I did it on the Kindle and for some reason, paragraphs just didn't exist. I should go back and try to fix that. It was a fun experiment, though I don't really like typing on the keypad thing. I keep knocking the wrong letters with my stylus (for those keeping track, YES, I had to Google how to spell that) and that caused me to take twice as long with what was really a very short post. Given that, it didn't seem worth the convenience of doing it in my room.

Roger Ebert died and I'm very saddened by this. He's one of those public figures who has been a fixture in my life as long as I can remember. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to watch his movie review show on Saturday afternoons on PBS. I didn't always find myself in agreement with him, but I did like the dignified way he talked about movies. He respected the art form and conveyed the idea that everyone should respect the genre as well. I liked that about him.  I'll miss the man.

I think one of the hardest things about getting older is how you have to watch as the  world as you saw it begins to crumble away. You lose people. You lose the touchstones of your culture. You lose aspects of the world that helped to define your reality.

My best friend and I were watching The Hobbit today and she asked me if I thought my mom would have liked the movie. My mom loved Tolkien's work and part of my reality as a small child was her reading it to me. When Peter Jackson put out the first three movies, my roommate and I took Mom to see them. This latest movie was the first one I saw without her. I do think she would have liked it.

I told my best friend that one of the things I think about quite often is how much I wish my mom could have read GRRM's work. I think she really would have loved it. She and I could have had hours and hours of discussion about it and that would have been so fun. There should be a word in our language that describes the grief you feel when you discover something that a loved one would have adored. It's worse than regret and sharper than missing them. It's pretty damned awful.

But who knows? Maybe the after life is like that part in What Dreams May Come when they are in the vast library. Maybe my mom's soul, now stable and whole and healed, HAS read GRRM's books and is just waiting for the chance to talk to me about it. It's a nice thought.

I need more nice thoughts.