Sorry. It's Hebrew. It's what you say when you get the messege of somebody's death. Of accepting the reality of it, even when you can't understand why it had to be and when you can't see how this new change to the world may have anything goid and right abiut ut, when all you can feel is the loss and the wrongness if it all.

We did a lot of flailing around. Ginger never flailed. Not even in her own struggle.

I'm just numb, you guys. I know I'll cry; I cried last night, and earlier today. But I'm just fucking numb.

I was once flying back from somewhere (I don't even remember where), and my flight back stopped through Atlanta airport. Ginger offered to come by and do dinner with me, but I declined because there just wasn't quite enough time in between flights to leave the airport and come back.

But then I got to meet her in DC and again in SF.

When I was confused and angry about Shari getting declined on her first attempt at getting back on a liver transplant list, Ginger was one of two people (Brenda being the other) who reached out to me backchannel and helped me to see the truth -- that Shari was in fact secretly an alcoholic who was drinking herself to death.

It would be a couple more years before I found the wherewithal to actually end the relationship, but I will be forever grateful to both Ginger and Brenda for their stern but gentle help in seeing the ugly truth.

Fuck. Tonight I will grieve and rage. Tomorrow I will pull my socks up and go about my business as she would, I think, want me to. But fuck.

I will miss you, Ginger.

I don't have any socks! I don't even know where my socks are! Argh.

A little story about tonight. I stopped at my favorite taco shop to grab a burrito for dinner on the way home. A homeless woman was sitting outside and asked if I would buy her a taco. My first (shameful) instinct was to shrug her request off -- so many requests for money here, and I almost didn't register she was asking for food. As soon as I got in line inside, though, I thought about Ginger. Thought about how often she helped, quietly, unobtrusively, never asking anyone for recognition or even thanks. So I bought the woman dinner and a bottled water and gave it to her as I left. And it was nothing, something I should have done anyway. But tonight I did it because of Ginger, and I've made a promise to myself to do it far more often. Just help when I can.

I think reminding myself to pull my socks up will be my mantra now.

I will follow your suit, Pix. It will be a nice way to honor a spirit so honorable.

Oh man. So sad, but so glad there are buffistas. Knowing that if anything were to happen to me, it would be like a vigil at my side, albeit in the Vast Series of Tubes in the Sky...