It's always too soon

We've lost another of the good people: Mike Ford was an excellent writer and a real mensch.

My world feels a little smaller all of a sudden, and my heart goes out to elisem and the other people who knew and loved him well.

It's always too soon

We've lost another of the good people: Mike Ford was an excellent writer and a real mensch.

My world feels a little smaller all of a sudden, and my heart goes out to elisem and the other people who knew and loved him well.

John M. Ford: a few memories

I didn't know Mike as well as I'd have liked, but I did get to spend time with him, either listening to him on panels or as the delightfully funny "Ask Dr. Mike," or in company with elisem.

The last few times I saw him, Mike was wearing an enamel lapel pin, with a good depiction of the human kidney. A fitting thing, for someone with a kidney transplant, but Mike thought of it and many others didn't. When Mike got the new kidney, he said that a good friend of his whom he had never met had just died. And he was still in the hospital when he got a friend to bring him a steak-and-kidney pie.

This past Wiscon, adrian_turtle and I kept Elise and Mike company for a quiet dinner in their hotel room, and then we all helped her set up for her haiku earring party: quiet and companionable, talking for a while, then slicing cheese from the Farmer's Market and assembling furniture.

I missed Mike last weekend, at the Farthing Party: not because he'd said he'd be there, but because elise was, and because there was an Asterisk panel, and he was part of, and part of the reason for, the first of those, a few Minicons ago.

A few Wiscons ago, I'd been working on an earring haiku. Well, it started as a haiku. The Sunday evening, L (who is not on LJ), Elise, Mike, and I had dinner. I sat across from Elise, who helped me work on what had become a prose poem, while Mike and L sat across from each other and discussed theatre. It was a remarkable blending/overlap of conversations.

Mike had the same gift papersky does, of writing poetry that fits into a conversation. Not the only kind he wrote, or that she does: Mike also wrote about love and the ways we defy entropy, and his memorial poem 110 Stories is all over the Web.

There are friends and loved ones we expect to outlive, for whatever reasons: we're younger, they have health problems, we think ourselves immortal. But that expectation doesn't make it less of a shock, or less painful.

pegkerr pointed me at this group of photos of Mike, many with his eyebrows raised, alone and in groups. It helps.

John M. Ford: a few memories

I didn't know Mike as well as I'd have liked, but I did get to spend time with him, either listening to him on panels or as the delightfully funny "Ask Dr. Mike," or in company with elisem.

The last few times I saw him, Mike was wearing an enamel lapel pin, with a good depiction of the human kidney. A fitting thing, for someone with a kidney transplant, but Mike thought of it and many others didn't. When Mike got the new kidney, he said that a good friend of his whom he had never met had just died. And he was still in the hospital when he got a friend to bring him a steak-and-kidney pie.

This past Wiscon, adrian_turtle and I kept Elise and Mike company for a quiet dinner in their hotel room, and then we all helped her set up for her haiku earring party: quiet and companionable, talking for a while, then slicing cheese from the Farmer's Market and assembling furniture.

I missed Mike last weekend, at the Farthing Party: not because he'd said he'd be there, but because elise was, and because there was an Asterisk panel, and he was part of, and part of the reason for, the first of those, a few Minicons ago.

A few Wiscons ago, I'd been working on an earring haiku. Well, it started as a haiku. The Sunday evening, L (who is not on LJ), Elise, Mike, and I had dinner. I sat across from Elise, who helped me work on what had become a prose poem, while Mike and L sat across from each other and discussed theatre. It was a remarkable blending/overlap of conversations.

Mike had the same gift papersky does, of writing poetry that fits into a conversation. Not the only kind he wrote, or that she does: Mike also wrote about love and the ways we defy entropy, and his memorial poem 110 Stories is all over the Web.

There are friends and loved ones we expect to outlive, for whatever reasons: we're younger, they have health problems, we think ourselves immortal. But that expectation doesn't make it less of a shock, or less painful.

pegkerr pointed me at this group of photos of Mike, many with his eyebrows raised, alone and in groups. It helps.