Re: TR regulars: Very sad news :-(

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 02:35:54 GMT, Neil <ix_tabTRAP@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Some time on 10 Jan 2007, Laurie S. <laurienews@xxxxxxxxx> said this stuff:

For whoever of the TR regulars are still reading this, I have some
very sad news to pass along.

I received word tonight from a friend of John James that John died
suddenly of a heart attack last month. His friend, who had stayed at
his house the night of Dec. 7, said he had complained a bit of
flu-like symptoms. His friend found him the next morning and said he
looked peaceful, that it didn't appear that he had suffered.

John and his friend visited me in the summer of 2005 when they were
taking a driving trip through part of Canada, which is why he knew to
contact me. I don't know if anyone else here had very regular contact
with anyone in John's life, so I figured maybe no one here would have
heard of his death.

I hadn't talked to him for a long time, but I had no idea how long; it
had apparently been a year and a half, since shortly after his visit,
the longest we'd ever gone without writing. He was pretty sporadic
with email, so I'd usually just send him a line now and then to get
some conversation going, and I guess the space between communiques
just got longer over time. I'd been meaning to email and/or call him
over the past months, but just never got around to it, which I now
regret painfully. You always know the other person is out there
somewhere, until they're not.

John became my closest Usenet friend a number of years ago. I
benefited greatly from his counsel in my early days posting here and
in time he showed me more of himself, however guardedly and however
sporadically. I enjoyed his friendship, and I enjoyed reading him here
as JJ, the brilliant, sweet, winkingly pompous jewel. I loved the way
he wrote; some of his more impassioned posts took my breath away and
some of the funny ones made me spit on my keyboard.

I will miss him very much. It's hard to click "send now." It feels
like it makes it even more true, somehow.

With sadness,

Laurie

Hello Laurie,

Terrible news.

I met John only once, briefly - but he was a clever man and, I think, a
kind one. It is, I'm sure, a genuinely great loss.

I'm sorry for you. But don't regret what you didn't do. Enjoy what you did.
& take care as always.

Thanks, Neil. You too.

But I do regret that I didn't contact him earlier. I don't feel guilty
about it, I just wish it had been otherwise.

I'm talking to his friend in email, which has been really nice. He's
letting me know more about John's regular life and I'm letting him
know more about his online life, which he knew about only secondhand.
John used to tell him about what he called the "rutting." :)

I'm going to post a separate, shorter message crossposted to soc.men
and alt.feminism. I think some people there would like to know.

Laurie
.