Well, I just spent all day today and all day yesterday out being sociable, so instead of blogging I should be doing laundry or dishes, or cleaning the catbox. But I wanted to get this down before I forgot it.

The past six months have not been particularly happy for me. My parents have been very ill and two friends of mine have died (one within a few days of my mom's massive stroke in March, and another very suddenly about a month ago). Periods of crisis aren't so unusual when you're in your mid-thirties and beyond, I suppose, since you know many people by that age who mean a lot to you, and they differ in age and level of health. But I was waiting for the bus at the corner of 17th Avenue and 4th Street tonight, watching the shadows swallow up campus and watching OSU students (and the ghosts of students I once knew, from OSU and from elsewhere, since OSU isn't my alma mater) cross the streets (most of them against the light -- some things never change). I thought about what I was like when I lived about four blocks away from that spot for a few months. That was back in 1992, when I first moved to Columbus. If 1992 had been like 2005, I don't know what I would have done really. I imagine that I would have lost my little mind. But here, in 2005, when I've developed (with the support of friends and some family members) the psychological tools to cope with crisis... it's not easy but I can roll with the punches.

It's funny how adulthood happens so gradually to some of us, and so suddenly to others. I think of one of my friends, who spent her teenage years constantly thinking up and carrying out (with some audacity) strategies to escape the abuse of the complete and utter tool that her mother was married to at that time. I also think of another friend whose father died of a heart attack before she was out of high school, leaving her with a mom who made (and makes) a better child than a parent. I don't have anyone as a close friend who I don't admire on some level, but both of those women are (given that we all have our neuroses) fine people who I admire very much for many reasons. I can tell you that if I had had their childhoods, I would be a far bigger mess than I am now. But I was allowed by fate or by design to grow up gradually, and for the most part, from cumulative (and relatively gentle) experience and not from any one massive crisis. If it was by fate, anything that I would have to say about it would be irrelevant, but if it was by design, I would have to ask if given the opportunity: so why is that, anyway?

I promise not to bitch and moan any more about how hard life has been for the last six months. (Although I reserve the right to complain about things like my dad not saying anything to me or my sister about being admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, or my mom refusing to take all of her meds.) I would like to add though that Sissy and Pilar were great women who I and lots of other people will miss very, very much. I don't believe in the kind of afterlife where you get a halo and a set of wings (although wings would kick ass, and although both of those women were Christians. Maybe they did get wings, and maybe they are kick ass. But I have my doubts). I also suspect that very little if anything survives of our personalities in any universal, cosmic sense. However, there is more than one form of immortality, and to be loved by many people who will tell others about how cool and smart and brave (and adult) you were when faced with life's crap is a good immortality. A pretty famous atheist once said that we are all made of starstuff. I would only add that there is mental starstuff as well as physical starstuff. That atheist (who died, oh, a good ten years ago now) lives on in a few of the books on my bookshelf. But he also lives on in my thoughts ten years after his death, as do my departed friends, as do all the people who were once in our physical spaces but who only live now in our heads, as tonight the ghosts of students I once knew did, as the ghost of the person I once was does.