Obituaries are Hard

I hope you are lucky enough to not experience the joy (heavy sarcasm font) of writing an obituary for a loved one.

You think you know someone until you have to sit down and write about them holistically. It’s less about the immediate feelings of grief on their passing, and more about sharing what made them special to people who, honestly, likely have similar experiences with them. You can’t make it too personal because other people are grieving too, but making it so bland that it has no personality is pretty lame too.

When my dad died almost eight years ago, he had lived a full life: birth, school, marriage, kids, jobs, church, etc. Logical steps along the narrative journey that were generally easy to write about because, let’s be honest, most of his life was behind him – he was 72 afterall.

But what about Jen?

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Jen

I feel like I don’t really know my sister Jen. Sure, I’ve known her her entire life, and even though I don’t remember a lot about our first few years together – I was, after all, only 4 1/2 when she was born – she’s always been my “little” sister.

Growing up, Jen was always the tag along, surely annoying my sisters more than me in that regard, but still seemingly always underfoot. We teased her relentlessly, as older siblings often do, and there were more than a few times where she’d run home crying from whatever house we were playing at, only to have our mother yelling at us to come home and answer for our crimes. I still remember my mother yelling Robert from the front porch, the indicator that she was truly mad and not just calling me home for some other reason.

But that was fine, right? That’s what kids did, especially kids when there were four kids born over seven years and we all just kind of took care of each other, much to our own chagrin. We grew up, played together less frequently, but Jen was always there.

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Shocking! Mitt Romney is Out of Touch

I’ve had a bit of writer’s block for a while, as evidenced by my latest Ben Folds project just petering out almost three months ago. Lots of reasons for this, most of which don’t seem that important right now.

But sometimes, I see something that just makes me want to write something real quick and get it off my chest:

Mittens Romney, a man that worked at one of the companies that helped kill Toys R Us (among others), is going to get on the Tweet machine (or have one of his social media interns or whatever) to tweet an attack at the long-promised-but-not-yet-delivered student loan forgiveness that isn’t any closer to happening than it was yesterday? Or the day before? Or January 20, 2021?!?

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Lincoln’s Song, Part 1

Inspired by: “Still Fighting It” (2001) from the Ben Folds’ album Rockin’ the Suburbs

The song that Ben Folds wrote about his son obviously became the song that makes me think of mine, right? Or at least one of the songs. This song obviously came out long before I had a child of my own, but it is a great song nonetheless. Prior to Lincoln, the thought of having a kid of my own was pretty foreign, though it was something that became more realistic once Kim and I decided that maybe it would be a good idea.

There isn’t a lot I remember about the early days of having Lincoln at home. He was born early (though just in time), so he spent the first six weeks in the NICU at McKay-Dee getting strong and being sassy. We’d visit him twice a day, prepping our home for his eventual arrival, recovering from the pretty traumatic ordeal of his birth.

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