Voicemail from the Parade of Death

An old friend of my family’s died the night before last. He and my mother were extremely close–she’s pretty shattered–and my father was rocked, I think, when I wrote him in China to tell him what had happened. Rick was in one of Bear’s earliest crop of drama students. My first memories of him are as a giant-sized guy who built sets in the theater where I spent a lot of my early childhood. He tolerated having a four-year-old underfoot pretty well; he came from a big family, with lots of sibs.

Because he and his partner were tight with Barb, I’ve seen a bit of him over the years since. I knew he’d had leukemia quite a few years ago, and got a bone marrow transplant that sent it into remission. Miraculous, that, but the cancer came back recently and he didn’t survive the second round of treatment.

So I’m a little sad, and a little thoughtful, and this is also why I haven’t managed to blog about the Powell’s reading or all the fabulous things I did in Portland with M.K. Hobson and Rebecca Stefoff and others. Where, I’ll have you know, I took 350 pictures. Let’s see if I can post one from my current location:

And there may be a little more radio silence. I have an enormous paperwork monster to slay this afternoon, and a bunch of little things to wrap up today and tomorrow. Once that’s done, K and I are off on a big sweep through Alberta to see our loved ones and collect even more pictures.

 

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About Alyx Dellamonica

Alyx Dellamonica lives in Toronto, Ontario, with their wife, author Kelly Robson. They write fiction, poetry, and sometimes plays, both as A.M. Dellamonica and L.X. Beckett. A long-time creative writing teacher and coach, they now work at the UofT writing science articles and other content for the Department of Chemistry. They identify as queer, nonbinary, autistic, Nerdfighter, and BTS Army.

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