Looking back on my decade of loss during a global pandemic

“It’s the pause that refreshes!” — early Coca-Cola slogan

Here’s the marching orders I got from Glenn, a fellow writer: “So you don’t want to write. And you say you don’t want to write about COVID-19. …

Fear is my gutterball.

It probably has been from a very early age.

And I sure as hell have been throwing my share of frames’ worth lately.

I’m coming out of a fog of holiday dread and confusion, worried about the state of the world as well as that of…

“‘One thing,’ he said later, ‘it’s quick in space. Death. It’s over like that. You don’t linger. Most of the time you don’t even know it. You’re dead and that’s it.’”
— “The Rocket Man” by Ray Bradbury

THE LAST THING I ever thought I’d do was write about Ray…

“Nothing” is always something. It’s just that sometimes you can’t see it.

“Small” says, “nothing is always nothing.”

“Big” says, “Just you wait and see.”

Expanding, going big. Or shrinking — and feeling small.

I’d been expecting the news.

But it still comes as a shock: the death of a friend.

I’d been out the Saturday before Hallowe’en, slumming through my neighborhood thinking about buying a used hat. Winter was coming and I needed something to keep my head warm.