This has been a hell of a week (right, Kyle?) I’ll break it into three parts — the first one sad, the second one happy, the third infuriating.

My town is not a small town (100k and some change, citizens-wise) but the community within my town is tiny. And so shock waves from a big event within our ranks travel deep and strong.

I had a friend, who was also a work colleague, who was also a fellow theatre performer. He died last week, horribly. I don’t want to give any more details here because I don’t want to attract attention to this post. More on that in part three.

But this I can share: I am sad. Everyone else is sad. On one hand, I take comfort knowing that pretty much everyone I know here is feeling the same way I am, and that we’re taking time to be kind with one another, feeling free to have ugly-cries together, and helping each other out.

On the other hand, I can’t get away from it. I can’t find solace in the discipline of work, I can’t fully escape into the magic of the stage. The big fat hairy paws of grief are grabbing at me wherever I turn. (I did manage to find a few days of sort-of escape — part two of this series.)

When I’ve experienced loss of people who my local friends did not know (my father, my stepfather, etc.) I was hideously alone in my grief, and had to try hard to point out to others the pain I was in. There was much less tolerance for it, and full expectations that I was to be over it in an acceptable time frame. So that sucked too.

Grief/loss is sure a lose-lose situation. And if the mechanics of humans are any hint, I shall continue to experience grief within a whole lot of scenarios, until my own mechanics inform me that it’s my turn. And that is a part of life, sure. Okay.

And, as for the inability to properly eulogize my friend here: If you know my theatre, or the non-profit at which I work, you can go to the websites and see words I’ve written there.

And let’s celebrate the small victory of being showered and dressed!

 Go to part two of this saga: the happy part