Today’s Letter will likely be pretty short. The time I allot in my day to write the Letter was taken up today by a task I have been attempting to avoid.
My friend, Tim Sparke, has been fighting brain cancer for two or three years now and is slowly losing the battle. He has outlived the doctors’ predictions by so much they have begun to call him their cockroach, impossible to kill. But the reality is that the horizon is very finite for Tim.
Some weeks ago, he asked me to write a piece about our friendship for a book he is compiling for his children, so they will have some sense of him when he is gone. I have dawdled on doing it because I have not wanted to really contemplate the world without Tim.
We’ve been friends for twenty years and have kept close though he and his family live in England and I am in America. His children are very young, six and eight, and their memories of him will fade. He wants them to have a sense of him as a man through the eyes of us who have known him.
It was a sad task but I have done it. I will let it sit overnight and then will edit in the morning and send it off.
It is also possible that I have hesitated writing because it brings me close to my own sense of mortality, a thing which has been growing over the last few years as I and my friends have been crossing into the third acts of our lives. Sobering thoughts, all of that…
The sun is shining today in New York, which made it easier. The grey days of the last week would have made the writing more melancholy than it was.
A year ago today, Mosul fell to IS and they are flying their blacks flags everywhere in that city today, even as they dig in for the inevitable counter-attack to wrest the city back from them. Obama has ordered 450 more advisors to Iraq to train the troops and put some metal in their backs.
War happens and life happens and cancer happens and we plow on, going through the complex motions that constitute life. What a mystery it all is.
Tim fights for his life, about to undergo a new treatment they think will give him three more months while IS occupies a swath of the world, lording over the inhabitants, making their lives mostly miserable while I sit in a sun blessed room in New York and type away.
Wow! Wow! Wow! were the words of Steve Jobs as he lay dying. Wow is right.
Letter From Shepherdstown 12 30 15 The eve of New Year’s Eve…
December 30, 2015It is the eve of New Year’s Eve and I am in Shepherdstown, WV with my childhood friend Sarah and we are prepping for the return of Sarah’s son, Kevin and his wife, Michelle Melton. Her husband Jim has gone on to Alabama to see his parents.
The balmy weather has passed and we are in a string of grey, chill days. I have been a bit under the weather today; some small stomach bug has bitten me and I have had only tea and dry toast.
It has been a pleasant day though. I am prepping my mushroom soup and a salad for dinner while doing my best to take it easy. We went to the store, Sarah and I, and picked up some foodstuffs and wine for tomorrow.
Mary Clare, Sarah’s older sister, and her husband Jim own the house we have been occupying for the Christmas party. Tonight they are returning from New York, with their son Michael and we’ll all toast the New Year in tomorrow.
My eyes have been turned from the world while watching movies, including “Steve Jobs” with a wonderful turn by Kate Winslet as well as Michael Fassbinder. Today, Sarah and I were watching “Suffragette” with Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep. It is about the struggle for women in Britain to get the vote.
The hard life of lower class women of the time, both in Britain and America, is almost unimaginable yet it was…
I remarked that it was the other side of “Downton Abbey.”
We have come a long way since then but not nearly far enough.
The rest of the world has remained away because I have not turned to face it. I’m not eager to right now though it will need to be faced when this respite is over.
I’ve been ploughing through my textbook for “Media and Society” and beginning to organize the class.
Checking my emails, there is almost NO business going on in my world. I am assuming that everyone, like me, has retreated into the Christmas Week mode.
The stomach bug has made me a bit weary so I am going to sign off. But not before wishing all and any who read this, a very, very Happy New Year!
Tags:Carey Mulligan, Happy New Year, Jim Malone, Kate Winslet, Kevin Malone, Media and Society, Meryl Streep, Michael Fassbinder, Michelle Melton, Sarah Malone, Shepherdstown WV, Steve Jobs, Suffragette
Posted in Entertainment, Hollywood, Hudson New York, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Television, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »