I know it's hard to stay around

I knew three people whose birthday was today; my mother's two sisters, Marian Junior (Auntie Juni) and Susan Jennifer (Auntie Sue). They were twins, and (I think) two years younger than my mother, so they would have been sixty-two today. Auntie Juni was fortyish when she died, Auntie Sue was (I think) fifty.

the third was my best friend Mike Swann. he would have been thirty-four now.

some days, all the dead people that I love give me strength. love doesn't die, after all. it stays with you forever and sustains you.

but everyone who's died that you love takes a piece of you with them. and on some days there's so much of me on the other side that I feel like a ghost myself; weak, thin, insubstantial and clinging stubbornly to a world I no longer have the right to walk in.

this is what made my mother lose the will to live. her troubles started after her best friend Carol died, at the end of a year in which she'd also lost her own mother and her last living sister, Auntie Jean.

but my mother's alive now. she's walking strong and living in love again, and I got my stubbornness from her. so will I. Keep saying that.

I know it's hard to stay around

I knew three people whose birthday was today; my mother's two sisters, Marian Junior (Auntie Juni) and Susan Jennifer (Auntie Sue). They were twins, and (I think) two years younger than my mother, so they would have been sixty-two today. Auntie Juni was fortyish when she died, Auntie Sue was (I think) fifty.

the third was my best friend Mike Swann. he would have been thirty-four now.

some days, all the dead people that I love give me strength. love doesn't die, after all. it stays with you forever and sustains you.

but everyone who's died that you love takes a piece of you with them. and on some days there's so much of me on the other side that I feel like a ghost myself; weak, thin, insubstantial and clinging stubbornly to a world I no longer have the right to walk in.

this is what made my mother lose the will to live. her troubles started after her best friend Carol died, at the end of a year in which she'd also lost her own mother and her last living sister, Auntie Jean.

but my mother's alive now. she's walking strong and living in love again, and I got my stubbornness from her. so will I. Keep saying that.

Oooh, yeah, you're amazing

the_reader - that piece of random kindness arrived with positively God-like timing. I love you. You rock.

Oooh, yeah, you're amazing

the_reader - that piece of random kindness arrived with positively God-like timing. I love you. You rock.

And I want you to know

I've been thinking for a while that Shona Kitten needs an "adult" name now that she's grown up enough to reveal something of her character. I named the kittens when they were born because I think anything alive needs a handle, but since they were just little mewling blobs I picked four names at random from the book I was reading at the time. The first kitten to be adopted has already had her name changed.

And Shona - it doesn't really suit her and it hasn't really stuck. It doesn't say anything about her and the character she's named after is a. not a character I'm very keen on and b.nothing like her.

I was looking at her last night during a conversation on LJ with naamah_darling and I thought of her lithe dancer's build and sense of adventure and humour, her Big Bold Pirate persona and her loving heart, her goofy grace, her rakish eyepatch and pink button nose and her Evil Death Glare and her huge delicate harlequin ears, and it struck me that the perfect name for her would be Naamah - partly after Naamah-the-person herself but also back to the source.

...it seems to suit her. I'm not gonna change my icons yet, we'll give it a few days and see how it sticks.

And I want you to know

I've been thinking for a while that Shona Kitten needs an "adult" name now that she's grown up enough to reveal something of her character. I named the kittens when they were born because I think anything alive needs a handle, but since they were just little mewling blobs I picked four names at random from the book I was reading at the time. The first kitten to be adopted has already had her name changed.

And Shona - it doesn't really suit her and it hasn't really stuck. It doesn't say anything about her and the character she's named after is a. not a character I'm very keen on and b.nothing like her.

I was looking at her last night during a conversation on LJ with naamah_darling and I thought of her lithe dancer's build and sense of adventure and humour, her Big Bold Pirate persona and her loving heart, her goofy grace, her rakish eyepatch and pink button nose and her Evil Death Glare and her huge delicate harlequin ears, and it struck me that the perfect name for her would be Naamah - partly after Naamah-the-person herself but also back to the source.

...it seems to suit her. I'm not gonna change my icons yet, we'll give it a few days and see how it sticks.