Broken Hearted

My daughter died.

She was having morning tea, choked on some food and despite the efforts of ambulance staff and then the doctors at the hospital, she could not be revived.

She was at day-care. I had just started her there in preparation for my return to work after three months as stay-at-home dad, to her and her brother.

It is at once too personal to share and too monumental not to talk about. I find myself broken in unimaginable ways as Emergency Contact and I go through every parent’s nightmare.

I’m dwelling on whether to post her eulogy, or not. It identifies us in a lot of ways and that’s not good for a number of reasons. But, I also want my boy to be able to come back to his daggy dad’s blog at some time in the future and not hit a blank spot where his sister should be.

While I think about it, do me a personal favour.

Be good to each other and back-up all the photos you have of anyone precious to you.

Our Culture Just Lost 'The Culture'

Iain Banks died today. For many of us it will feel like we’ve lost a complex, visionary and hilarious friend. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be his new widow, as he was notoriously good company in real-life as well as on the page. Banks has been my favourite author for nearly 30 years. He’s the only author I have bothered to collect and re-collect in entirety, several times. 

(When you really love an author, you always end up “re-collecting” because at dinner parties you recommend and loan to guests. The guests might return, but the books rarely do. I don’t mind. Books are fair that way. You’ll do the same at someone else’s dinner party.)

Banks is such a favourite for so many of the right type (i.e. people who think like me) that he is a touchstone for a couple of my best friendships;

“Hey man, good to see you. Have you read your latest Banks Statement?”

“Yeah. Better than the last one, not as good as the one before that. How about that bit where…”

And we’re off.

He wrote under two tags, Iain M. Banks for his Sci-Fi and plain Iain Banks when he was doing literature. When he announced he was “poorly” a few months ago, I started reading more things about him. Here’s something I found amazing:

It was assumed in a lot of places, including my own, that his Sci-Fi books were his dirty, great cash-cow that supported the more highfalutin literature.

Wrong - and by orders of magnitude. Mr B. himself reported that his literature outsold his Sci-Fi, four-to-one. I find that astonishing. I think good Sci-Fi is as important as any other writing, so I’m not going to say that it’s heartening to hear that, but I do find it mighty interesting. He also said that he enjoyed writing his literature - but always looked forward to getting back to the main character in his Sci-Fi universe, The Culture.

I read him in order simply because I read as his publishers released. I suggest, if you haven’t read any and are interested, that you start out of order:

Iain Banks - Espedair Street

Iain Banks – Complicity

Iain M. Banks – Consider Phlebas

Iain M. Banks – Use of Weapons

If you’re a Sci-Fi bod, do Phlebas and Weapons first. (Maybe Player of Games. That’s also a cracking place to start.)

After that, you’re on your own and I’m jealous that I don’t get to go there with you, for the first time, again.

I will doubtlessly need to rebuild my collection of Banks books in the future, and they will move inexorably into the digital realm, rather than being in the physical. It’s deeply unfair that he won’t get the chance to be uploaded and go digital like some of his characters and give us more, but he lived in and wrote about a deeply unfair and uncaring universe.

Bloggers Note: This blog is called “A Grey Area” first and foremost for one of Banks' characters, the GCU A Grey Area.

Mr Z

Thankfully, it’s not often that you sit in front of someone that you’ve known for over 20 years and have this conversation:

He starts, “Hello my dear old friend, how lovely that you could come.”

I answer, “Hello mate. Sorry it’s been so long. What’s it been… three years?”

“Yep. I was working it out the other day. Three and a bit.”

“God, it just gets away from you sometimes doesn’t, it? We were supposed to have that big dinner, postponed it for one reason or another, and the next thing you know it’s another year later.”

Him, “Nobody’s fault, mate. It just happens. You were busy. I was busy. Then I was sick. Nobody to blame. I didn’t tell you because I thought I’d just get better and then we’d finally get to do that dinner.”

Me, “So, what’s the prognosis?”

“I’ll be dead in two weeks.”

“I’ve never done this before and I’m betting you haven’t. Are you terrified?”

Him, “No, I’m ok with it. I sort of had to choose this route. The other had no quality of life. If they did throw everything at the problem, I might be able to make it to a loo 10 metres away instead of five, but still won’t be able to eat and I can’t work… so…”

We then chatted like old times for an hour, and then he said, “Mate, I’m going to fade soon because I’m due for a dose of morphine, so help me up and we’ll say goodbye.”

I got him up, a six foot man who now weighs under 50 kilos, we hugged, and he said, “It’s been great to know you. Make sure you enjoy your retirement when you get there. I hope you and EC have happy lives together. Take care of yourself, big fella. I won’t ever see you again.”

I gulped back the lump in my throat, “It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to be your friend, Mr Z. Goodbye.”

And I walked away. I walked out to the car park, put on my sunglasses, turned the stereo up  full blast and gave the car an absolute thrashing all the way back to my side of the city. It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t sadness, it was just wanting to really be there and do it.

Mr Z and I started in cabs on the same day over 20 years ago. We became instant friends, partly because it was unity in adversity over our boss, and partly because we genuinely had a lot in common. We shared a flat and a cab plate in Manly for years. We would watch cricket and he would drink red wine and me beer. He caught a little bit of my left leaning opinions and I caught a little bit of his right leaning opinions. When I became single, he cooked roast dinners on Friday night for months on end and we’d watch telly and play trivia games. When I was ready to face the challenges of girls again and eventually met EC, he was supportive and gracious as I took my leave and moved in with EC over the other side of town. He was at my sister’s wedding at my sister’s invitation.

Mr Z is charming, intelligent, amused and amusing. He was a deeply civilised man with refined tastes, indulgent habits and absolutely no idea how to turn up on time. He used to give me the absolute poops the way he’d leave me waiting places for him to arrive, but it was always worth the wait. For a man who was continually late, it seems so unfair that he should leave early.

What To Do With Dark Corners

Christopher Hitchens and Kim Jong Il both died this week and I've just been pondering the difference in their contributions. Between them, they represent the extremes in our ability to face 'the truth' and illustrate how those differing abilities can have serious consequences.

First to The Hitch. Atheism has found a natural home on the net. It suites us in so many ways from the most trivial to the most serious. Organising a group of people who are naturally suspicious of formalised organisations is best done by a shapeless, organic entity that is hard to pin down. That's the net. There's no gathering under big arches and spires to abase yourself in front of a pitiless god. It allows broad ranging interests to be pursued from any location and it allows it to be done anonymously. Anonymity is very important to atheists in some parts of the world. I don't need to explain why – but again, that's the net.

Remembering Hitchens in A Grey Area will only represent the tiniest percent of the tiniest percent of what has and will be written about him and by much more serious thinkers. But, the fact there is so much activity on the net surrounding his death is interesting. The medium has enabled a growth in a particular philosophy of life that is hard to imagine without the enabling technology. I only get a keyhole view (I am only one person) but my feeling is that non-belief, reason, and the humanist movement has got an enormous lift from the net. The truth will out and it outs much more easily when it's democratic.

Christopher Hitchens faced the most unpleasant truths unflinchingly and with open eyes. He was not a foxhole atheist who converted in the face of his demise. He had worked too hard at uncovering and exposing the hypocrisy of religion and I have nothing but contempt for the religious who either a) prayed for him to get better so that they could shanghai him into the ranks of belief, or b) those that relished his painful death and gloatingly make statements about hell and damnation. A pox on both your idiotic and immature houses.

Hitchens made the world a better place. He might have changed a few minds, he certainly put a few plonkers back in their place and he entertained. Be anything, but don't be boring. He was never that. I'm going to miss him.

Similarly, I don't relish the thought of the demise of Kim Jong Il. Not because he was a blessing to his people, not because he was a blessing to comedy, but because he was the devil we knew. This next fat little porker is entirely unknown and I can only hope that he follows the rule of the third generation in a dynasty that inevitably fails its father and grandfather.

I have been reading for years the horrors that come out of North Korea. The profligate spending on the military while the locals are forced to eat the bark off trees and finally resort to eating each other before burying what remains of an emaciated corpse. I've been astonished at the level of brainwashing that has been maintained in the peninsular. Dear Leader really had most of them fooled and it's to his credit that he did this in the face of the growing news content on the web.

Some years ago, I saw a doco on an ophthalmic surgeon who went over the DMZ and did a few hundred simple eye operations that restored sight to all of the recipients. It was an operation that the North Koreans were unable to perform. The reaction of the patients was chilling.

As the American surgeon pulled the padding from the eyes of the afflicted, they'd look up at the beatific picture of KJI that can be found everywhere and thanked Dear Leader for returning their sight.

To be so literally and figuratively blinded is the work of a religion and I don't think that KJI is being given enough dues when his leadership is simply described as a cult of personality. It sounds a little paltry.

Kim Jong Il closed eyes, Christopher Hitchens opened them. It's about light. It's funny how that word means both not being a burden and illuminating.

Maybe I Do Wanna Be Buried In A Pet Cemetery

A while ago, I mentioned Kitty in The Carpark.

He wore a hi-viz vest like the rest of the warehouse lads. He got around doing his cat thing. Security once sent out a message that a small set of keys had been found and handed in, and I imagined that Kitty had started to commute. And he met an end on the road out the front. (Paws to Reflect)

I joked that the warehouse was going to have a tasteful little ceremony with full hi-viz honours.

Well, turns out I wasn't far from the truth. When the carpark got unusually crowded the other day, I got forced into an area I never use and came across his grave.

Nice.

I particularly like the spelling. Click here to see him in his hi-viz jacket.

Palpable Loss

If you’ve visited here for even the shortest period, you will be aware of my offsider, Smurf.

Smurf wasn’t born Smurf. He was issued that name by accident.

To get a horribly large work project done, I had been given extra head-count. My boss told me to hire the best-of-the-best to make it happen. I said I would find a suitable Smurf.

Calling someone smurf was a professional discourtesy to my HR department. Whenever I was in conversation with them I always called staff either Muppets, Pumpkins or Winged Monkeys. (Dependant on dysfunction.)

My boss said, “Stop that! I don’t want to front the legal department because you keep calling people horrible nicknames.”

I said, “Your standards are too high. But, I will do your bidding and find me a smurf. A proper one. And I will love him and pet him and call him smurf.”

My boss said something pithy about workplace bullying or whatever. I wasn’t listening ’cause of all the gasping and gurgling sounds he was making.

Besides, I already had someone in mind. I’d seen him about and suspected that he was a rugged individualist. Someone who could do-the-do. Someone with superior hacking skillz. Someone who was cheap.

First time I noticed him was in our canteen area. He was wearing a beaten up jacket with an original Star Wars logo, mid-length hair in an employment challenging artificial orange and the unmistakable stink of mischievous intelligence. I sounded out his boss who said, “Brilliant. Unstoppable. Strange smelling. You can’t have him.”

After four minutes in interview, I knew I had found my “Smurf“. More importantly, I had found someone who totally understood that calling him smurf would annoy the piss out of all the do-gooders. (To cement the rigorous screening process, a colleague’s four-year-old walked past him immediately after the interview, and on seeing his primary coloured shirt and tie, said, “You’re a Wiggle!”.)

A glorious union was born.

Smurfy’s been by my side, eight hours a day, five days a week, for three years now. To say that  our relationship rivals my relationship with Emergency Contact is to confuse the professional with the intimate… but still, with perseverance, I reckon I can get Emergency Contact into the sack as well. At least he remains one of my greatest friends.

In our ‘Outside Special Circumstance’ group, nothing that hath been wrought could be done without the intelligence, patience, humour and drive of Smurfy.

Nothing.

The entire company now whispers the name ‘Smurf‘… not as a Grey Area point of mischief, but to invoke a larger power; in times of need.

I am deeply sad to say that Smurfy goes away soon. He’s going to his wife-to-be, overseas. I wish the best of all things for Smurf and his Smurfette.

I hope that he and his gal return soon.… and that he and I get back to the business of making stuff. Especially fun.

Thank you JD (Smurf).

Travel well.

NP (A Grey Area)

Paws To Reflect

I usually like to keep it light and fluffy here in A Grey Area, but I have some sad news. Kitty in the Carpark just met an untimely end on the main road outside the building.

The warehouse boys will be holding a tasteful little memorial service, where he will be buried with full Hi Viz jacket honours.

RIP Kitty.

If you want to see the only photo I got of him in his Hi Viz jacket, click here.

(Actually, he wasn't wearing his vest - just goes to show...)

Mr G Has Left the Building

I've been grumpy and someone at work said that Grey Area is just +35 propaganda, (not mentioning any names Reeeeshy), and they're right. I have been in a bit of a slump. I usually like to be sweetness and light. You know me. It's just that a good mate of mine died last Sunday and it has put a bit of crimp in my otherwise comfortable existence.

It wasn't a surprise, he had been crook for a bit. But I don't have anything comforting to say, like "at least he's at peace now" or "in some ways it's a relief it's over" or anything like that. It's not. He liked his life and wanted more. It isn't fair and there's no eternal justice to it. He wasn't begging for release, he wasn't bored, he wasn't fed up or exhausted, the tumor just stole his life away. He didn't even get to rage against the dying of the light, because it was a brain tumor so he just sort of faded out.

Graham was a terrific bloke and I'm proud to call him a friend. Funny, kind, unfailingly generous, he was a true weirdo (one of those people that makes you glad there's still room for idiosyncrasy) and bore an uncanny, I mean frightening, resemblance to Ned Flanders. One of life's gems.

Goodbye Graham, I am going to miss you.