This year, the world lost one remarkable woman and two wonderful, brilliant, talented, and funny men to what Gilda Radner called “The most unfunny thing in the world, cancer.” It’s been 30 years since we lost Gilda Radner. I often wonder if the drugs she took to try to have a baby was the catalyst of to set off her genetic predisposition to the disease. But I digress. My friends Golden Ears and Mr. Bill both died of cancer. My youngest aunt Elizabeth died as well. I accept these deaths as a part of life, but they’ve left holes in the lives of many people that only those who feel the loss can comprehend. That pain is one I can relate to in my on way, but not their way. Death is so personal, so subjective from person to person. I think we need to do a better job as a society to accept death and do a better job comforting the dying so they can greet death as an old friend. (Yes, that’s a Deathly Hallows reference.) I guess it really is true that you understand death the longer you’ve been alive.
Golden Ears was my late husband Kevin’s oldest friend, They met in Orange County, CA in 1980. Golden Ears was working at a computer store, and Kevin walked in, went up to the alphaSyntauri keyboard that was hooked up to an Apple II and started playing a line from one of the classic Prog keyboardists (I want to say Emerson). Golden Ears, a talented musician and music lover, recognized the tune, He was a force of nature who was the coolest Nerd I knew. He was the one who set me up with a nice telecommuting job back in 1998 that made me realize that doing customer support was a good fit for me. I’m eternally grateful for that nudge. His memorial service was wonderful, a loving tribute to him by his closest family and friends. It also included a chance to take pictures at a self-serve photo booth with the back drop of the ending frame of the Loony Toons cartoons–That’s All, Folks! Those were his favorite, and the kind of humor that he would have wanted at his memorial.
Mr. Bill was an online friend my age I’d met via the website MetaFilter. He’d lost his wife in 2009, and when my husband died in 2014, he was very supportive. I could be honest with him about what I was feeling, and he validated a lot of the range of emotions I felt the first six months or so. I never met him in person–he lived in Texas. He was a great soul as well as the coolest Gen X Nerd I knew. He was much more than that, as he loved to go to TRF, and a member of his local Masonic Lodge.
My Aunt Elizabeth is my Mom’s youngest sister. The half century she was on this earth was tumultuous, and she carried a wonderful spirit throughout it. As sometimes happens in larger Mexican families, she was only 7 years older than me. I have her to thank for knowing who Gilda Radner is in the first place. She woke me up to see Saturday Night Live when I was 4 to see Roseanne Rosannadanna. I found it funny, even though I wouldn’t understand the jokes until I saw that bit again when I was 15.
2020 is the first full year without all these three, and all of us who knew and loved them will do our best to carry on without them. For Bill Hicks was right, it’s just a ride.