hey roller boogie boy

Originally uploaded by kristalynn.

i have an impending trip to vancouver where i'll visit with my sister, my new niece, and several friends who moved from east coast to west.

i just got an email from one of those friends who works for a talent agency. one of their clients just died. he was 38 and rollerbladed and she used to yell "HEY ROLLER BOOGIE BOY" at him.

she says, "It's sad because he just dropped dead. Blammo. Dead. And all I could think of was that he would never get to sing that part in "Hotel California" about you can check out any time you want but you can never leave and that bummed me right out. Because it's the little things. You know?"

i do know. when a friend of mine died, i was struck by the fact that he would never see anything beautiful again. images would exist, but his eyes would not be around to take in whatever he considered beautiful, like a flower, a girl, a wicked piece of cake... it's hard to explain what you go through when people die, but as my namesake in vancouver says, it usually is the little things that strike you the hardest.

she went on to say, "Or like right now that song by Toto about the rain falling in Africa is playing and it's so gay and I like to sing to it - like he won't hear that again. And that disturbs me. So let's hug for ten minutes when you arrive."


people tend to get really uptight about funerals. i remember thinking, "how the hell can people eat at a funeral?" i was all uppity. but then i went to a funeral, catholic nonetheless, and was all, "oh, is that a zucchini dip?"

the strange thing about a funeral is that it somehow turns into a magical celebration about life.