The naked stars remember

Which is a very good thing, because my brain is all fragmented. I've also been struck pretty much dumb by the events of the past month and have hardly managed to tell anybody anything. The account of events behind the cut is discursive, muddled, and awfully long. I want to say here, therefore, that everybody did Mike proud. Things looked quite smooth from my pew, but I know that a lot of pieces were put together very late indeed, so all praise to everybody involved. At one point the minister said, "Patrick Nielsen Hayden, please come up here and tell us what to do next," and I couldn't help laughing, as some others did too, because how editorial is that, after all? The readings of Mike's work were all most excellent, from papersky's starting with the Janus sonnet through jonsinger's reading Acme Food Enhancements from Making Light, and coffeeem with "Shared World," and casacorona reading a bit of Aspects. I know I'm forgetting people and I wish that I'd written everything down. The forgetfulness is my fault, not yours. Things were read so well that I actually bounced in my seat and felt gleeful, no small accomplishment under the circumstances.

The eulogies were breath-taking. There was a great deal of laughter, as was only right. Everyone who spoke (Jim Rigney, Victor Raymond, Lynn Litterer, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Neil Gaiman), told anecdotes about Mike, showing many sides of his character. The anecdotes described him, they made a shape that he was inside of. They didn't make me cry. But Teresa said, "He was so good, and so kind," and went on, very eloquently, but I couldn't write it down for you now. Those things are harder to say than the narratives. Neil said, among many other things, "He wasn't smart to make you feel stupid; he was smart to make you smarter." Those sentences, the ones with the verb "to be" in them, were the ones that made me cry.

Mike's aunt spoke last. It was a little spooky. She gave a dry careful summary of events and times and a few anecdotes, very sparse, but very clear, and it contained so very many of the themes of Mike's life when the rest of us knew him, it was heartbreaking and profoundly comforting all at once.

Emma and Adam played Mike's song "Madonna of the Midway." I have the lyrics on a battered sheet of paper that he handed me one day, but I had never heard it played before. I was so glad to hear it.

The sun shone the entire time.

( Read more... )