On people leaving this world...

And now for something kinda depressing.

In the last couple of years, several wonderful people of my acquaintance have died. I was reminded of this by visiting the Lacis website (which I don't often have money enough to even browse anymore) and seeing the memorial tribute to Kaethe Kliot, who I have known since I was a girl.

I feel bad that I was tied up in my own stuff last year in spring that I didn't even know she was gone. She was wonderful to me and I will always remember her as one of my mother's freinds who treated me as my own person once I grew up and not simply as my mother's daughter. To tell the truth, like people always do, i thought she would be here forever.

I lost a couple of other dear people, both of whom I wish I could have had the time to know better before they went. One, a really neat SCA lady, who was a deeply spiritual person and natural political mover (couldn't really stay out of it any more than I can prevent myself from sewing or drawing or cooking) but was also instantly like family once I met her, and never pulled anyone unwilling into her swirling vortex of political stuff. I miss Kate.

The other was my mom's best freind of many years, a glassblower and artist and just a wonderful, if powerful and sometimes overintense person. I saw her everytime I went home to visit mom, and the last time she was dying of cancer. She was still 'there' though, and she seemed determined to hold on until her 50th birthday, which she did. Also hard to beleive Lisa is gone. She was a force of nature.

I have this idea, which I guess I came up with in childhood, that people don't just go away when they die - they get a job assignment of sorts, which is something that they loved to do in life. I imagined, for example, that my Great Grandfather, who I never met, but whose paintings hung all over our house, had the job of painting the sky, along with all the other artists. They would paint what they wanted to that day, and since there is a lot of sky with all its variations, there is always something new to do. I'd see different artists' styles in every sunset or winter storm.

So I imagine that Kaethe is making lace out of ice-clouds and guiding spiders as they make their webs, and that Lisa is a volcano goddess somewhere. Kate, though, I think had something she was supposed to do. She was always busy doing things.

Funny what you get in your head, isn't it?