Peg Kerr's Journal

This week, I've been cold, and it feels as though the freezing temperature has sunk deeply into my bones.

I had an occasion on Tuesday where I was waiting outside for two and a half hours. In January. In Minnesota. I have a good coat, and I wore gloves, and I could occasionally break away to sit in my car and run the heat for a few minutes. But I had to keep leaving the car to check on where I was in the queue. I tried to manage my impatience by reading on my phone, and I kept having to take off the gloves to scroll, since the screen couldn't recognize my touch with the gloves on. So I got thoroughly chilled.

As I mentioned previously, I've been trying to keep the temperature of the house lower to save money. I took hot baths and would get out again and run the space heater, and still, I would shiver--it felt as if my inner furnace has gone out. I've worn up to four layers. Every time I'd open my clothes closet to pull out another one, the cold air would rush out from that uninsulated space and smack me in the face.

January. Gray skies. Minnesota.

I found myself meditating upon the heat death of the universe.

And I also thought this week of another death. Yesterday, January 26, was the fifth anniversary of the day that cancer took Rob from me. It is said that at the time of Samhain, Halloween, the dead draw near to the living. But I have come to recognize one particular ghost, my husband's, who comes to be with me again from January 24 to 26th: the days I left ordinary time to enter the hospital to be with him. I didn't leave again until he was gone.

He isn't angry or threatening or sad.

He's just there, invisible but close as my next breath.

Thinking about all this reminded me of a sonnet written by a friend, John M. Ford (Mike Ford to his friends), who also died too young. David Goldfarb writes here:

[the sonnet] was a comment on an entry on Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s blog, about an amusing error in Amazon.com’s database, which concluded:

if I were a better writer I’d conclude by yoking the trivial to the tragic, relating the twin inevitabilities of death and database error by means of a rhetorical figure involving worms.

…and John M. Ford (who I’m sure Patrick would be the first to admit was indeed the better writer) responded by doing exactly that — in sonnet form!

Here is the sonnet, Against Entropy:

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

The universe winds down, yes...that's the cold that has been seeping into my blood this week.

The worm drives helically through the wood: that's cancer, I realized.

I am switching to a new phone, and I have spent the last three days screenshooting and saving old texts because I am switching from Android to Apple, and so I've been going through all the medical update texts I was sending out to friends and family five years ago. I'm remembering again how awful it was: once the leukemia set in, it devastated him. He lost fifty pounds in two and a half months, his kidneys shut down, his intestines fell victim to diverticulitis, and his strong, kind, and clever mind began to weaken and wander down paths of confusion and paranoia.

And now his ghost comes to me. The light of other days, the fading colors, the regret.

When we were planning his funeral, my pastor asked what Rob thought about life after death. After a perplexed moment, Rob's brother Phil offered tentatively, "Rob always said he would be star-stuff."

Perhaps Rob was right, and he's one star out there, shining to keep the heat death of the universe at bay.

So I'm bearing witness, remembering the name of my lover Rob. I loved him. I still love him.

I miss him.

I've turned up the heat again. It's all I can do. Although his ghost visits me and lingers awhile, he isn't here to keep me warm.

To create the collage, I used an image for the background that I found when I searched for "heat death of the universe." Instead of a crystal glass, I used a glass Coca-Cola bottle. Rob loved his Coke, and it was the last thing we gave him to taste before he passed away.

(Fuck that worm cancer anyway.)

Background: a portion of a black hole surrounded by a blue spinning nimbus representing the heat death of the universe. A cartoon worm emerges from the black hole. A semi-transparent Coca Cola bottle balances on top of the black hole, upper right. Three gradually enlarging semi-transparent Coca Cola bottles (like a vision seen in strobe light) fall toward the bottom of the card. Bottom center: a shattered Coca Cola bottle lies on its side. Top: three semi-transparent heads shots of Rob looking out at the viewer. From right to left they look neutral, amused, and astonished.

Entropy



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

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Today, April 10, would have been Mike Ford's (John M. Ford) 50th birthday.

Happy birthday, Mike. We miss you. Dreadfully.

There will be a gathering at Dreamhaven Books tonight in his honor, but elisem warns that the pub gathering afterwards may be rescheduled if the snow that has been threatening all day starts.
Love,
Peg

(P.S.: If you haven't done so yet, do consider making a donation to the John M. Ford Book Endowment Fund in his honor.)

Yesterday was John M. Ford (Mike Ford's) memorial service. I must say, it was one of the best I've ever had the privilege to attend. Many of Mike's friends spoke and provided music, and excerpts of his writing were read. As the pastor says, it really helps when most of the best things said were written by the departed himself.

Eulogies were offered by Jim Rigney (who writes books under the name Robert Jordon), who considered Mike a brother of the heart, Victor Raymond (badger2305), Lynn Litterer (lynnal), Teresa Nielsen Hayden (tnh), Neil Gaiman, and his aunt, Jane Starner. Many, many of Mike's friends were there, including quite a few from out of town, dozens of whom are on LJ.
Some things said and read: Mike's sonnet, "Against entropy. Jo Walton (papersky) read the Janus sonnet. Steve Brust (skzbrust) read the villanelle "I am the king and I want a sandwich." jonsinger read the list of new items from Acme Food Enhancement, "Dining for the Posthuman Era," which you will find among the samples of his writing here. tnh read his recipe for cooking Hot Gingered Pygmy Mammoth & Jumbo Shrimp Salad:

( recipe here: Feeds your whole tribe. )

casacorona read from his unfinished novel Aspects and Emma Bull coffeeem read from "Shared World." She and Adam Stemple played a song that he had written, "Madonna of the Midway."

Some of the things said during the eulogies:

Neil Gaiman: "He was my best critic because he was the smartest. You'd give him something to read, and he'd say, 'That's brilliant. It just needs this one line.' And you'd say, 'You're right,' and put it in. And then it would win awards. And just you and he would know." He told a story of once sending out an invitation to a party which included a typographical error. Mike build an entire musical play around that typographical error. And then he would perform it.

Another time, Neil sent an invitation out with just a flat listing of directions to his address, and he added at the end, "I'd like to see Mike Ford make literature out of this." And Mike did. He made a sonnet cycle out of the directions to Neil's home.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden (tnh) said, "He wasn't the sort of smart person who made you feel stupid. He made you feel smarter just knowing him. He told me once, 'I have a horror of being obvious.' I told him, 'Mike, you have no clue what other people consider obvious."

Since Mike loved cheese, there were exquisite cheeses from the Wedge Co-op served in the fellowship hall afterwards. The wake was held that night at the Sheraton, the hotel where innumerable Minicons have been held, and really, with all the old familiar faces, many of them gone from Minneapolis for years, it felt like a night in the green room at Minicon ten or fifteen years ago. A music circle formed, of course. I came in when Emma Bull was singing "Signal to Noise" and stayed, happy listening, for hours. jbru reminds me of one memorable moment of music and laughter being the singing of "Puking in the Heather," an Irish folk song inspired by an off-hand comment of Mike's at a convention a long time ago--proof, as skzbrust put it, that not all of Mike's legacies were positive ones. fredcritter sang "Ripple," which made the tears flow again. People brought wonderful food, potluck: cheese (again) chocolate, ham and other meats, cake and pies and sweets and nuts and several different kids of scotch. . . pameladean brought her gingerbread, which brought tears to my eyes, because it reminded me of the Shakespeare reading group meetings where Mike would dazzle us all with his readings.

I stayed late. We thought of Mike with love and toasted his memory. May it remain ever green.

Edited to add: Other write ups of the memorial: The Pioneer Press and paperskyJo Walton's report.

Edited to add again: The UK's Guardian article. pameladean's report here. She mentioned, which I didn't know, that gerisullivan did the programs. And if you haven't seen it yet, here is Mike's Wikipedia entry.

My personal tribute to Mike is here.

Rob called me in tears this morning. The Minneapolis/St. Paul SF community is in shock. John M. Ford (Mike to his friends) is gone, cause of death unknown. elisem found him this morning. Here is the post at Making Light, which includes tributes and a collection of links.

I've known Mike for years, seeing him around conventions here in Minneapolis. But I really got the opportunity to know him in the Shakespeare reading group that met every two weeks for five years or so. Many remember Mike best from his uproarious and astonishing "Ask Dr. Mike" performances at cons, but I will also particularly treasure the memory of his velvet voice bringing to life Othello, Lear, Bottom, Septimus from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and Thomas from Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning--and the astute and hilarious asides that he threw in with his readings, that kept all of us in stitches, laughing until the tears ran down our faces. His books and poetry were subtle and brilliant. I was one of those fortunate enough to receive his long and wonderful Christmas poems, and I treasured those chapbooks and re-read them as often as I read any of the poetry in my collection.

We've known for years that Mike's days might--would--probably be short, despite the transplant, because his health has been poor for so long. Still, this is a dreadful shock.

Mike, we will miss you and remember you always. I will miss your writing, your astonishing breadth of knowledge, your voice, your amazing quick wit, your wild eyebrows, your bon mots, your warmth and humility and humor, and the poet's gift that enabled you to choose the perfect words that strike right to the core of the soul.

Everything I could say about losing you seems pitifully inadequate. We will not see your like again. And we are all the poorer for losing you. You were too damned young. Rest in peace, my friend.

Love,
Peg

Edited to add: Flickr group tagged JohnMFord here.

Edited to add again: Someone linked to his last post here. A villanelle about Edward IV. A wonderful glimpse into Mike as a humorist, a historian, and a poet. And here is one of his best, 110 Stories, about the World Trade Center and September 11.