Can You Miss A Man You Never Met Except In Thousands of Words?

Writing is about one thing. Going into a room alone and putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before

When David Bowie sang Space Oddity in the seventies, I was a child. Reading books under a blanket and helping mama do dishes, oblivious to an orange-haired man singing about floating in space.

It’s stuck in my head, that song, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the strange nature of the loss. Our lives keep getting stranger and stranger to navigate.

Can you miss a man you never met, except in thousands of words?

I sent my newsletter on Friday, like I always do.

In minutes, my inbox was filled with notifications. Comment on your post. Comment on your post. Comment on your post. One email stuck out like a sore thumb.

The subject was my post title, but beginning with RE:

I saw his name and smiled. People do that, sometimes. Hit reply to say something they don’t dare post in public, usually wicked funny. I knew his name. He read my writing, and I read his. So I opened, curious what he had to say to this one. And read this:

Please take (his name) off your list. He died.

I stared at that line, trying to digest those words. He’s gone? Shock leaves us dumb sometimes and like a crazy person I opened a tab and hurried to his profile.

I honestly don’t know what I expected to see there.

Strangely, I could hear my heart in my head as I read his last post again. Maybe it’s not strange. The faint thump, thump, thump of the beat that keeps me alive.

Pain is part of every day now, he’d said. We can be pulled into despair by pain but we must have hope. We must have hope. He talked about his doctor discussing long term treatment options. It’s okay, he said. I’ve beat cancer before, he said. I’ll fight it again.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

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Here’s a story that seems wildly unrelated but it’s not. Sixty six million years ago, a six mile wide rock hurtled out of space and slammed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula with the energy of five thousand megatons of TNT.

That six-mile rock hit the planet with so much force it vaporized the rock on the sea floor. Toxic gas engulfed the entire planet. The temperature on Earth was 311° Fahrenheit that day. Plants and trees spontaneously burst into flames.

Fire, fire. Everywhere, fire. Animals ran, like the forest fire in Bambi, except it wasn’t deer and rabbits, it was dinosaurs. Big and small ones. The day the dinosaurs died.

People hang that fear in front of us. Doomers, we call them. The planet is dying, the planet is dying and we’re all going to die. And maybe that will happen one day and maybe we’ll all take one last breath and perish together, I don’t know.

Here’s all I know. That’s not how death usually comes for us.

Most often, there’s just one broken person weeping on a floor somewhere. Weeping, with nothing but pain to hold onto in the dark and there’s no light and I can’t stop seeing his wife’s face. Smiling, pressed against his shoulder and his crazy ass beard.

Me? I’m not even a blip on the radar screen. Just an online friend.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you

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William Goldman wrote books like Marathon Man and The Princess Bride, and glorious screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men.

Here’s what he said about writing.

“Writing is about one thing. Going into a room alone and putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before.”

The funny thing about writing on the internet is that when you read someone’s work long enough, you feel like you get to know them. Maybe even in a way the people in their every day lives never really do.

When my sister comes over for coffee, we laugh and catch up, words bouncing back and forth. How is work and what are the kids doing and what I never do is give a heartfelt seven minute soliloquy on the parts of aging that I didn’t see coming or how brutally hard it is to make a life out of words. No. It’s in my writing I share that.

Some of the stories I’ve shared could only ever have been written in words that sprung from so deep, they could never be spoken out loud but could only ever be bled with trembling fingers in the wee hours of dawn before the world is awake.

All I know is this. He was going to beat cancer again. Like he did before. And I was hopeful because he was hopeful. And now there will be no more of his words and the world is a little less for that. And I’m floating in in the dark of that lonely space.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

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Here’s the thing about us. You, me, all of us. We think we have time. Maybe it’s not even that. We’re not dumb, we know we don’t have forever. We do. We know that. But the problem is that everything else pushes to the front of the line.

Fear and squeaky wheels, mostly.

Always someone needing something and work and bills and heaven forbid, surprise bills we weren’t expecting and cooking and cleaning and lord, how is it 1 AM already and I’m so tired and the alarm is going off in a few hours and I didn’t publish the submissions today I guess I better go do that first, before I sleep. You know?

Busy, busy, busy, there’s never time to be found.

How do you find time to do all the stuff you do, people ask me and I laugh and say I don’t. I’ve tried and tried to find time and never manage to. There is never time to be found. You’re going to have to make time for what matters.

Funny thing is, it’s not really time that trips us up. It’s not. It’s our fears.

What if it’s no good, what if I fail, what if I suck, what if no one likes it, what if, what if? What if I spend all my time chasing this stupid f—ing dream and it fails and was a big waste of time, huh? Then what? A thousand what ifs and no two ever the same.

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door

Then some random day you go for a checkup and the doctor says I’m sorry, you have cancer. Or maybe you’re driving down the highway going home like any other day and a deer jumps in front of your car and you’re flying through the air and if you’re very lucky and the fates smile at you maybe you crawl out bleeding, but alive.

But maybe you don’t.

Maybe, like my mama, one minute you’re laughing with your sister and the next minute you make a funny sound and go quiet and don’t even hear your sister screaming your name and my auntie will take that memory to her grave.

And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

I don’t know. Seems like the longer I live the less I’m sure of and some days I long for the days when I was younger and so sure of everything but here’s one thing I know. My friend is gone and I am here. And maybe I should do something with that.

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before.
—William Goldman