unexpected_loss epitome of incomprehensibility I mentioned this in a kind of jumbled way before, but someone in my theatre group died suddenly on Wednesday night. I heard about it Thursday morning. His name was Jonathan. His husband was with him when he died; he also has family outside the province who didn't get to say goodbyes in person. As for the theatre group, he wasn't involved in 2024-25 when I_joined_a_band_of_musical_pirates, but he's been there on and off for twenty years. That included directing some of the plays. So I didn't know him as well as a lot of people there, but knowing that secondhand_stress can be challenging, I braced myself before Friday's rehearsal, telling myself: 1) Take care of yourself too 2) But don't make this about you (other people are grieving him more) and then I ended up feeling helpless because instead of going_around_being_supportive, I too was limited by physicality - PMS, which is sometimes barely noticeable, hit me with stomach cramps; I left early for the bus, not wanting to wait a long time for the next one in the cold and then I forgot one of my bags, prompting me to text people a request for help (someone found it and will bring it on Tuesday). I mean, no one's blaming me for having stomach cramps and finding -18 C weather uncomfortable. Those are normal things. Like I said: take care of yourself but don't make this about you. Wish I wasn't so absent-minded, though. But about him and the practice. At the beginning, before we started working on H.M.S. Pinafore, we gathered around and listened to memories from the directors and committee members. Colleen said more information about what caused his heart attack would give closure in the sense of "how" but not "why" - and that seems like a good assessment - Turns out it wasn't completely out of the blue: it was caused by internal bleeding in his chest, a rare complication of his surgery the week before to remove "benign" growths. People who knew him for years shared memories; I assembled a few of mine in "Jonathan." 260125 ... nr i'm very sorry to hear this, e_o_i. 260127 ... e_o_i Thanks, nr. I didn't know him as well as a lot of the other people, but it was still tough prodding myself to go to practice yesterday. I got there late and people were practicing Trial By Jury instead of the longer play, contrary to what I expected. Two parts had been changed, not just one. I didn't know how things would go. JR, now playing the judge, was sitting beside me. Before, he'd told others not to go up and hug him, that if he wanted hugs he'd say. This seemed needlessly grouchy until I realized that they'd been good friends and it was completely fair not to want hugs. It wasn't as if I had plans to hug him, either. (I'm not a particularly huggy OR un-huggy person - mostly I follow other people's lead.) Anyway, he didn't seem grouchy in practice, just pensive. I think I was going_around_being_supportive - or at least sitting being supportive - by being a dry, casual, listening-and-sometimes-answering presence, if that makes any sense. Oh, and lending him a memorable_green_pencil when he needed to mark his score. 260128 ... e_o_i Now it's Jim Joyce, a former teacher and fellow poetry-group member. I knew his partner better - she died a few years ago. Claudia of the storyteller's voice. Just last month, he drove me and another person from the West Island to Hudson and back again. He seemed fine. Lonely, granted, but physically in good shape. My selfish reason for missing him: he had nice things AND good advice to say about my poetry in the last workshop. Now this is gone. But I feel worse for people who knew him better. ... A bit of dark humour from Mom - to my surprise; she claims not to touch the stuff - "Isn't James_Joyce already dead?" Mom, this is a different James Joyce. (Yes, his name was actually James Joyce.) ... Another funny plus slightly creepy or sad thing - so many things are a bundle of different emotions at once... I was telling Lou from Accent_Open_Mic about him, that he was the partner of the woman whose poems I read for one of their events, and I added needlessly, "He's still alive. Well, I think." Here is my obituary: "He taught a Philosophy of Communication class. One day, my classmate James counted how many times he said 'you know' and got to over 100. In defense of both James the student and James the teacher, the class started 8:30 on a Friday morning. It's hard to be attentive OR eloquent at that time...you know?" 260531 ... e_o_i (context: the conversation with Lou was just yesterday - I heard about his death hours later) 260531 what's it to you? who go blather from