Oh god, this is so awful. I kept checking the board throughout the day yesterday, dreading seeing a new post in Beep Me, and then couldn't get back here until just now. I'm so sad and sorry and holding you all in my heart and mind.

Ginger, goddammit. We love you, and there's no end to how much we're going to miss you. I hate that you've been in so much pain for so long, and I hate that this is how it's going to end. I hope that hospice provides sweet relief and an easy passage.

Shit, shit, shit.

Please, take care of yourselves.

So much this (and you, too, Scola)

I think I'm going to write "Pull Up Your Socks" on a post-it and stick it on the TV.

This is a very good idea.

Easy re-orging ~ma, amyth.

Ugh, Sparky. That sounds like a mess, I'm sorry you are stuck in it.

Oh, MM, that's....yes. Crying now.

And amyth, jesus, that sounds awful too! I'm so glad that your surgery got moved up. May it go as smoothly as possible.

Zen, I don't know how much you're in touch with any of Ginger's Nashville friends, but if there's anything that I can do for them or for her family here, please let me know. I keep thinking there must be some way I can help.

Oh, I just wish we could be there with her. I hope she can feel our love.

These things are inevitable, given we live our lives here. For all the joyous births, death must come in the end.

You people are my sanity.

The writer Catherine Newman had a lovely essay in the NYT in the last week or two, about keeping vigil for a dying friend. It made me think of JZ's experience with her friend G, and now it makes me think of the friends and family who are keeping watch over Ginger. It's here: [link]

The last two paragraphs are the ones that are particularly stuck in my mind today:

After I had my firstborn, I was stunned by the basic fact of birth. “That person!” I would say, clutching my husband’s sleeve, “That person, that one, all of those people, every one of them was born!” I was not exaggerating my wonder at this fact. Every living human represented a pregnancy, a birth, a groaning hook-or-crook launch into the world! The universal can be so startling.

I had a similarly banal revelation after Ali died. “You and you and you,” I thought, on the Amtrak train. The teenager on his iPhone, the woman with her sandwich. My old parents, me, even my own children. Everybody was going to die, with or without six different drinks in front of them. You already know this, but I hadn’t understood it. I hadn’t understood that you’re stuck loving only hearts that could stop beating, that will. You love them with your own stretched and scarred organ, the one that might pound on long after, like a dumb animal. Like it didn’t get the memo about the heart and what the heart can take.

Amyth augh that's awful, I hope you get relief soon.

Sparky - I have no words. Well I do, but they're probably not permitted on campus.

MM - that was just right.

hugs to everyone whether you need it or just want to bank it for later, unless you don't hug and then quiet support (not in email). I love this place and you all.

MM, Kate, thank you both for these words.

I didn't have breakfast and I'm trying to figure out what to eat for brunch/lunch that will be easy on my stomach, because it hurts so much right now. Maybe a banana and yogurt?

Broth?

Soup seems soothing.

I am not getting a lot done at work.

I can't even with this news. Thank you guys for being here.

I honestly believe that Ginger is a huge reason that I ended up writing for a living. I know for sure she got my ass through grad school. I loved her on this board and in our private communication - her edits were always so spot on, she was so smart and giving.

I'm glad I got a chance to see her in January. She gave me some stuff (a beer related print and magnet, a couple old purses to decorate.) And we drank milkshakes and talked and laughed at the gallows humor that her living with cancer had turned out to be. She was tired, but always quick to roll her eyes and take the opportunity to laugh in the face of her pain and aggravation.