I lost my mom 11 years ago today.

I still miss her every day, but her spirit is still very much with me.

As I look back, I see that I have spent the last 11 years trying to learn and put into practice the lessons she taught me.

• By how she lived, my mom showed the value of compassion, cheerfulness, thriftiness, and practicality.

• She taught me how to dress for my body type, and how to feel beautiful on the inside, no matter what is happening on the outside. Because of her, I know how to step back from stressful situations, regroup emotionally, and take small, positive steps to refresh my spirit.

• She taught me the value of making and sharing food with people you love. From how to stuff a chicken to how to make pie crust, she taught me everything she knew in the kitchen; and she knew a lot.

• She taught me to read voraciously and to keep an open, inquisitive mind. She taught me to take a deep interest in other cultures, other languages, other cuisines, and other ways of doing things beyond the merely familiar.

• She taught me the value of having a strong inner spiritual life, rooted in prayer, ritual, music, and a shared community. Because of her, I still say the Rosary when I need to calm myself down, even though I may not believe all the words anymore.

• She taught me to love music, and carry it with me in my heart wherever I go. Because of her advice, I was in choirs all four years of college, and then joined a choir when I moved to Seattle. Choral singing has given me a rich inner vocabulary of music, and also helped me make friends when I was new in Seattle.

• She taught me to admit it when I am wrong, apologize, and try again. Equally importantly, she taught me not to gloat when I am right.

• She taught me that relationships with other people are what truly matter, not possessions or prestige.

For all you taught me, Mom, both in your good examples and in your bad examples, I thank you. I am who I am because of you.

Today is the anniversary of the death of our friend Karl Ed Johnson.

Some of us wrote heartfelt posts about our memories of him shortly after his death. (Here is a link to tatterdamelion's, with our friend John's as an anonymous comment partway down. Here is a link to mine.)

Every so often over the past year, one or the other of us would chuckle and say "If Ed were here, he'd totally say" (fill in the blank), or "That is such an Ed thing to do."

It makes me happy that memories of him live on so vividly with his friends. We talk about him more than we talk about some friends of ours who moved away years ago.

Just today, polytrypos broke open Ed's copy of "Spelljammer" and cut out the cardboard pieces for spaceships to use in a game tonight.

Sometimes I feel as though he's just in a different room, about to walk back into this one at any moment and pick up where he left off.

Today is the 10th anniversary of my mom dying.

I know that if she had lived, my life would have been drastically different. I probably would not have left Minnesota, for one thing. And I doubt I would be with Andrew. So, since I like my life right now, I can't really imagine this other-life in which she's still alive.

Every so often I dream about her; they're always nice dreams. The last time, we were strolling through a mall together and I was updating her on all the cool things in my life, specifically Vivian, and she was so happy for me.

I'm including a link to a page I wrote in December of 1997, which I recently re-posted here on LJ with the marking "private." I'm turning it "public," but with the warning that it's long, and it's a tear-jerker. Don't read it unless you want to read about someone else's mom dying.

As I reread this now, I know I could edit it down, make it more palatable for public consumption. But I'm not ready to do that yet.

Maybe 10 years isn't long enough to get over the death of someone you love so much. Maybe there's no amount of time.

We had our Ed Tribute Game on Saturday, for our friend who died in early August. We reconstructed some characters of Ed's that we remembered from playing with him through the years, put them all into the same Dungeons & Dragons rule system and handed them out to the 8 or 9 people who showed up to play that day.

It went very well. In about 5 hours of gaming, they had 7 combats; they faced orcs, undead, dragons, etc. Lots of miniatures were used.

At the end there was a Gate to Chaos that the old champion, Arcturus D'Tree (one of Ed's nigh-constant NPCs) had to turn over to a new champion, because he was passing beyond this world. So all the various Ed characters were there at the Gate of Chaos, and Jen's character (the evil corporate CEO / mage Darla Spider) was imbued with the power of a god, and then the ceiling started to fall, so everyone jumped into the Gate of Chaos. "Where do we go after we jump through?" people asked Andrew. "Who knows?" he replied. It seemed fitting that all the shards of Ed's persona passed through the gate, to who-knows-what great adventure...

There were a few classic moments. Here's the scene that stands out for me.

John Bryan had this daring plan to infiltrate an orc keep by pretending to be a prisoner of our orc prisoner, Thog (yes! Thog!). It worked -- it worked so well that the next thing John knew, he was face-to-face with the orc chieftain in his private audience chamber.

(Andrew, playing the NPC Thog, bluffed the orc chieftain as follows: "Boss, this important horde consultant to help orc horde maximize synergies!" He rolled an 18 (minus 1 for CHA), versus the orc chief's 5 (minus 1 for sense motive. ("Thog, you may yet live through this," John told him.) And the orc chieftain TOTALLY bought it. So much so, that he pulled down a wall map and gave John an overview of the map, where all the strongholds were located, and where in the swamp they were breeding half-dragon abominations. And then he pulled down another wall chart with their org chart ("Orc chart!" heh heh!), and told John all about the hierarchy of the Worm Lords.

As John heard his companions making a ruckus in the outer courtyard, something very like the following scene occured:

John: "Now, me teach you important management things!"

Orc chief: "Huh! OK!"

John: "There are three things for orc band to know! Agility! Trust! And Rage! First, me teach you Agility!" (John places his hand on the table and quickly dances his knife blade around his fingers, a la Bishop in the Alien movie) "Now, you try Agility!"

(Orc chieftain slowly and painfully attempts to imitate, nicking himself in the process)

John: "Good, good. Next, is Trust!" (John puts his hand down over the orc's hand) "You do knife trick again, me trust you!"

(Orc tries again, hitting John's hand for a couple points of damage)

John: "Is OK, is OK. My turn to practice Trust."

(Orc hands knife to John. John snatches his hand away, plunges the knife through the orc's hand, pinning him to the table. Orc howls in surprise and pain)

John: "AND NOW, WE LEARN RAGE! BARBARIAN RAGE!!!!!"

Whereupon he went into a barbarian rage and attacked.

It was awesome!

Well, I haven't been posting for awhile. Here's what's going on in Catherine, Andrew and Vivian's little world.

Funeral for our friend Ed was Wednesday afternoon; the place was packed. Half of us had to stand in the lobby outside the chapel. I have very mixed feelings about everything involved with this, but I do have to admit that I felt much, MUCH better after the funeral was over. No more anxiety dreams about missing it or showing up in the wrong clothes.

Very angry and sad about Ed dying, just like that. Just like that -- how could this happen?? Having an aneurysm -- or even two at once -- isn't his fault, it's biological. But then again, Ed allowed certain factors in his life that contributed to it. Horrible migraines should have been a clue that All Was Not Right. Maybe an MRI would have detected a bulge in those two veins in his brain. High blood pressure, intense amounts of stress, insane work weeks, not taking his medication, crappy diet, very little exercise, horrible dramatic family politics and woes, never asking for help, always being the strong one, never saying "no"... on and on and on. It's so easy in hindsight to realize that he was overstretched and that something needed to change. But now it's too late.

We don't even know whether he's being cremated or buried. We don't know anything.

Feeling an impetus to make sure our affairs are in order, and that Things Are Taken Care Of. We're locking in the interest rate on our home equity line of credit, so our payments don't keep climbing up and up and up. Our life insurance is set. Pondering whether there's anything we can put into our wills to make things easier for our friends and families, if we were to die suddenly. You don't see these things coming, but sometimes they happen.

-- Vivian is a ray of sunshine for our whole group. Her sweet little eyes, so innocent and trusting, gazing in wonder at a doorknob, or a crow, or her children's video, make me see it in a whole new way. She inspires such an intense, helpless, proud love in me... if they could bottle that, they would make a mint. People would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if they had it, for the way she makes me feel.

Just in case any of my (admittedly few) readers knew Ed, and just in case you don't already know about the arrangements for his funeral, and just in case you would like to attend on Wednesday, here is the information, courtesy of Jen.


When: Wednesday, August 9th, 4 pm
Where: Seattle Preparatory School, 2400 11th Ave E (directions below)

Service followed by a small reception right there at the school.

Directions:

Enter at street front entrance into the school... then go to the chapel. I'm afraid I don't know exactly where that is.

Seattle Preparatory School is located on the north slope of Capitol Hill overlooking the University of Washington. Our address is: 2400 Eleventh Avenue East Seattle, WA 98102-4098 Please note: The garage is only accessible from 11th Avenue East by way of Delmar Avenue East!

FROM THE NORTH: 1. Go south on Interstate 5 to exit 168A (Roanoke Street). 2. Exit the freeway and proceed to the light (Roanoke Street). 3. Turn left onto Roanoke and cross over the highway. 4. At the light, go straight! 5. Follow Delmar Ave E and take the first right onto 11th Ave E. The garage is on the left at the to of the hill just before Miller St.

FROM THE SOUTH: 1. Go north on Interstate 5 to exit 168A (Lakeview Blvd) 2. Exit the freeway and proceed to the stop-sign (Lakeview Blvd) 3. Turn left onto Lakeview. Follow Lakeview and proceed under the freeway and through the first light to the second light. Take a right onto Roanoke. 4. Cross over the highway. 5. At the light, go straight! 6. Follow Delmar Ave E and take the first right onto 11th Ave E. The garage is on the left at the to of the hill just before Miller St.

FROM THE EAST: 1. Go west on Highway 520 to Roanoke exit. 2. Turn right onto Roanoke and proceed one block - go straight through the light. 3. Follow Delmar Ave E and take the first right onto 11th Ave E. The garage is on the left at the to of the hill just before Miller St.

I lost my mother when she was only 51. Up until yesterday afternoon, she was the youngest person in my life to die.

With the sudden death yesterday of our friend Karl Ed, that is no longer true. He was only 32 or 33 years old.

It appears that natural causes of one sort or another -- heart attack, stroke, aneurism -- killed him very suddenly while he was on his home computer putting in some overtime. Ed worked himself ragged to earn the fabulous salary he commanded as a top-flight software team problem solver type. 70-hour weeks were common for him. He never, ever said no, and he never, ever asked for help. Were there warning signs that he needed to slow down? Did he suspect that perhaps he was pushing himself beyond his limits? We'll never know.

I live in such a privileged little corner of the world. No famines, no military actions dropping bombs on my city. My little corner of the Pacific Northwest is fairly non-violent, stealing being the major crime practiced in Seattle. And my little neighborhood inside Seattle is even more insulated from the hard realities of life that most of the world needs to face throughout their lives.

In my world, it was easy to let yourself believe that everything will continue pretty much as it always has; that our little circle of friends would continue forever, that there would always be "an Ed game" to attend.

Several years ago, disappointed with a game of his which I'd attended for a few sessions, I said I would never be in another game of Ed's. And I never was. And now I'll never have the chance again.

Andrew (who doesn't ever give up on people) had kept attending Ed's games. Less than a week ago, he told me how much Ed had improved as a GM, and how enjoyable the game was now. And I missed it.

When I think about Ed, I remember all the times he came to my rescue in one way or another. I called on him two times when my car wouldn't start, and both times he was there in minutes, jumper cables at the ready. He was never too busy to help a friend in need.

Ed was never too busy to go out for dinner, or play in another game. His schedule was filled to bursting with dozens of friends, events, dinners out, opera nights, roleplaying games, and his two high-energy dogs. He was happiest surrounded by a large crowd of happy people enjoying themselves. If given half a chance, he would serenade us in Italian, or sit down at the nearest piano (even in public places -- especially in public places) and play us something of his own composition.

Due to a traumatic injury in his late teens, Ed was often in pain. Apparently his migraines were truly astoundingly painful. But since nothing he did helped ease the pain, even lying down in a dark room, he'd learned years ago that the best thing was to distract himself by being social with people. It was hard for me to remember, when I saw him, that the odds were he was in severe pain at the moment. I'm lucky that I never think about pain -- I never have to. For Ed, it was his constant shadow.

I think that's why Ed chose to focus on the best in people. When people disappointed him, he let it go and moved on immediately. Each new day was a fresh day for him. When you live with pain, you see the hardness in life so much more clearly than the rest of us do. And you can choose to focus on the good things in life, the true things, things like honesty and integrity and friendship.

Ed was a true friend. He didn't gossip behind people's backs, or use his intellect to make clever jokes at people's expense and then pass it off as "only a joke." He didn't always know what he was talking about, but he was willing to listen to other people and admit it when others had more expertise in something than he did.

Ed had a huge heart. I wish he'd taken better care of himself, instead of giving, giving, giving to everyone around him. I wish that we'd been more perceptive; I wish we'd seen that he was pushing himself too hard. I wish we'd tried to get him to ease up.

I feel lucky to have known him, and happy for the times I treated him well.

Ed loved Jameson's Irish whiskey, and I bought a huge bottle to have in my liquor cabinet so he would always have his favorite treat available when he came over. Last night, Andrew and I had a shot each. It burned going down and brought tears to my eyes. Or maybe they were there before.

Ed, we salute you. We will miss you more than we could have expected, and more than we ever let you know.

One of our friends was found dead today. He was in his early 30s. It seems he may have died suddenly yesterday or last night. We are all utterly shocked, stunned, devastated...

Keep his family and friends in your thoughts, please.