Well. That was unexpected.

[carose59]

"Incidentally, May I Say From The Beginning That If A Thing Is Not Science, It Is Not Necessarily Bad. For Example, Love Is Not A Science."*

I saw Diane on Wednesday, and I told her I was writing again. She was very pleased, and very interested in my process. We also talked about my tendency to choose control freaks for close friends.

Thursday, I was working on the story again, using some old notes. The notes were from an IM I'd had with Melody Womack. We talked over a lot of the Wiseguy stories I wrote, and we wrote some together. It occurred to me that she might like to see the finished story, so I thought I'd try to locate her. (We hadn't been in contact since December of 2005.)

She was actually very easy to find. The second reference I found to her name (including middle initial), was her death notice. (The first one just said that she was dead.) She died on December 28, 2007. I haven't found anything about cause of death.

I have my usual stunned, shovel-to-the-back-of-the-head feeling of there being a piece now missing in the world. For a short time Melody was an important part of my life. Without her, my writing would be different; she supported me plumbing my darkness in my stories. Without her, I would never have gone to New York, and I would never have met Celia. Without her, some people who no longer speak to me might still be speaking to me. (The friends I had at the time I met her didn't like Melody, and I was supposed to make a choice. Whenever I'm put in this position, I always make the same choice.) She was loyal, kind, and manipulative. She was jealous of my talent, and she didn't like my writing process, and she wanted me to be different.

Her last act of kindness to me was to invite me to stay with her when she came to town for a Lord of the Rings exhibition at the state art museum. It was a lovely few days, even though I've never seen any of the LOTR movies, I haven't even read the books. We ate at various restaurants, took ice cream back to her hotel room at the Omni, and talked. One day she went back to the museum alone for a movie, and I walked around the mall. It was one of the most relaxing experiences of my life, and it was just what I needed at that time.

I wish we had stayed in touch, but we were too different for that to work out. I feel her absence, and I miss her.


*Richard Feynman

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