It's so hard to know what to do or say when those you love lose someone they loved. Mike (John M.) Ford touched my life but tangentially, but he was part of the core of a circle of friends I have been having the honor and joy to get to know over the past --gosh-- decade now.

And today, from a distance, I watch you shake, and swear, and hear your tears, and I wish the virtual world of the internet had all that damned virtual technology we feel we were promised for times like these, so I could hold you, hold you all at once, even though there really is no fix for a sudden gaping wound in reality and a hole in the web of the heart that is friendship.


I'm so sorry, you guys.

I will open one of his books tonight, and his writing will make me smile with wonder, as it has before and as it does all day today as people post his poems and songs in remembrance, and I will miss him with you, but, oh!, I know!, not nearly as much.