when I was a teenager, the people I knew who died, did so mostly from accidents or the occasional suicide. In my 30s to 50s, it wa smostly from cancer. But this past twelve months it’s been heart attacks that are starting to thin the ranks of those I know. First there was that massive 7.8 quake last November, which gave my oldest friend (of fifty+ years) a heart attack – which, very happily, she survived.
But then a relative whom I’ve known for the last forty years had a heart attack and died virtually as he hit the ground. I have to say I’m not heartbroken, I knew him because we’re related but he wasn’t a friend.
And then, this week I had the news that a fan friend I’d known for close to 3o years had died in Canada. I don’t think there was a lot of hope from the start, but some prayed, some just hopeed or held good tbhoughts, but it was no use and now he’s gone. He was a crusty, contumacious, said-what-he-was-thinking no matter how much it offended some, sort of guy, but we liked him anyway, and I’ll miss him. He was a mainstay of fanzine fandom for many years, that was how I came to know him, back in the days when I pubbed my ish.
So ave atque vale, Rodney, may there be fans in heaven and a good fanzine system. And I know that at least, if there isn’t one of those there yet, there will be as soon as you’ve settled in and looked around. (As well as a lot of angels looking horrified.) We’ll miss you down here.
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Suicide was something I knew about in my teens from cop shows on television and, since they were cop show, the suicide generally turned out to really be murder.In my fifties I did lose Don Boyd to cancer. He was a good friend. He was as shy around women as I was and, as a writer, more inventive and hopeful. He never gave up but cancer took him anyway. Around about this time cancer took my favorite uncle. He was a big man. He was as tall as an oak and could have played Little John. The last I saw of him, however, he was less oak like but still a good uncle. I have tried to be just as good an uncle.
Contumacious? I’ll have to look it up. It probably applies to a lot of the people whose funerals I sat through, seated at the organ and listening to the tributes and figuring “Sounds like a cranky person” and trying not to smile.
No, I’d never thought on the nature of illnesses claiming people I know and how that might have changed over the decades. But in the first 4 years we were in this town, the local high school lost 4 pupils either to sports injury or suicide. And in Dannevirke in late 1990s or thereabouts there had been those two horrific car crashes that claimed 3 or 4 teens each time — some in the same year-group as our kids.
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Yes, my high school class was at the lower numbers end, with 28 pupils, we lost one to suicide after I left, one to an accident with a bee (allergic) and one to a car accident all before anyone went on to University. As for contumacious, they’ll probably say that of me too,,,