An update and a Eulogy.
Welcome back to the Archetypist.
A few things happened this past month that prevented me from sticking to the regular posting schedule, most notably, a family friend passed away. If you’re the praying type, please keep Jane, her daughter, and her grandchildren in your prayers.
Often, when someone we know dies it’s sad because they’re gone. When I think about Jane’s death — someone who was a Nurse her entire life (first in the NICU, then in the ER), who viewed it as her mission to help as many people as possible; who had a commitment to direct action, whether that was medical mission trips or moving across the country to help her daughter, or taking on full-time childcare for a coworker’s newborn who had special needs when most people would be enjoying retirement — when I think about the loss of such an incredible person, I’m struck not just by the sadness of not seeing her again, but the feeling that the world is somehow a worse place without her. Like there’s 1% less good being done. A little less compassion. A little more indifference.
It was Jane who offered to watch my own child countless times when things came up last minute.
It was Jane who was the “neighborhood nurse,” bandaging cuts, bruises, scrapes, poison ivy, for the local kids.
It was Jane who dropped everything and drove my wife to the hospital when she was having chest pains and heart palpitations and I was an hour away with my son. On her day off, she put on her scrubs, clocked into work, and was my wife’s personal advocate at the hospital.
I only knew Jane for a few years, but she was my friend. Sometimes, when she got off of her shift at the hospital, I’d stand at the fence and talk while I let my dogs out. She’d have a glass of white wine, I’d have a beer, and she’d tell me all about the craziness at the Emergency Room, or about how her son was invited to be an on-air commentator for the Olympics, or where she was planning to go for her next cruise, or how, when on a mission trip to Haiti, her group of nurses were apprehended by a militia and the United Nations had to fly them out on a 6-passenger propeller plane.
When she passed, she passed suddenly, and it was a shock to all of us. But her legacy lives on: the way she conducted herself; the way she cared for others. The countless lives that she saved in the NICU and ER who will never know the person who cared for them.
And the great irony of all of this is that she would be annoyed that I’m writing about her at all because she did not do what she did for recognition. She did it because, well, there was someone in front of her who needed help and she wasn’t going to stand by and let them suffer when she could do something about it, even if it meant great personal inconvenience or sacrifice.
Put simply: she lived a life worth imitating.
So, for the Substack: you can expect a return to normal posting schedule ramping up into next week (9/2 or so). Happening parallel to Jane’s passing, I took on a developmental editing client and have a few things primed and ready to go about Consequences and Obstacles, as well as some plot thoughts and thoughts on story overall. The 500-word analyses will return on Tuesdays, and the end of Afterglow will be posted on Friday.
Thanks for reading, if you read this far. Go be kind to someone today, for Jane.