The High One turned to flame in his hands, and then into a memory

[sovay]

Patricia A. McKillip has died. I read her so early, I can't remember the first time. Her influence on my writing and on some of my thought is incalculable. We met twice at different conventions. I shared readings with her husband. She wrote the sea like I could breathe it. I was re-reading one of my favorites of her mid-career novels idly last week, hoping that whatever she wrote next would be something I liked. At the moment the stones are still falling out of the sky.

Comments

[sovay]

Met her once. What a sweet, lovely person! I hate that we don't have any more from her. But at least we've got what we do have.

It is true that the work is not nothing. I just miss when the person behind it goes out.

[sartorias]

As do I. My context here being, how do I explain it? I wish no one had to die, that the people I cherish could last as long as they loved life and found value in living. At my age, so many have already been lost. So very many. Some of those hurt more than others, and for years; there is no calling, no writing to them, no turning around and finding them unexpectedly. And so many of them were not people of book or pen, their words were given to the air, so what little I have in a concrete sense to keep the memories anchored might be a cup they once liked to drink out of, and there is the remembered touch, or a borrowed T-shirt that became a hand-me-down, now precious because their warm and breathing body was once inside it. With her, we only met once, on a panel, and talked a little afterward; she probably forgot at once, but it was a precious memory to me. I wish with all my heart she was sitting at her desk right now, dreaming her next book, but what I have is that richness of books. Does that make a bit more sense? I don't want to seem like I don't feel anything when they go.

[sovay]

Does that make a bit more sense? I don't want to seem like I don't feel anything when they go.

I didn't think you had meant or seemed it. I know some people don't even leave their work behind them. I'm just having a very hard time right now, for some time, with losing people who make things, when the people who can only destroy seem to go perpetually on.

[sartorias]

Could not agree more.