I feel it is uncivil to make cracks about the dearly departed, btw.
You are indeed dear to me. And will forever be. If I ever have doubts, I just go back to Beltane two years ago and bask in the warm sun of those delightful evenings on the greensward and the beech grove and, oh, YES, the treehouse. Once someone has shared what we shared then, they can't ever be anything but dear to me.
As to departed, how can I say this gently? You have said several times you were gone. Which I regretted. But you kept returning. Which I applauded. But given that history, it's kind of unfair to say that you should get special treatment for having departed when you haven't.
So to make us all happy don't threaten to leave again, and don't leave us ever. That way we can post all the things we feel fit within SI Jeff's parameters about you and you can respond to them and we will all have a high old time.
(Sigh. Twenty years ago I used to say we would have a gay old time. But I can't say that any more. If I ever become inclined to become homophobic, one of the reasons would be the way they have stolen from me a word I used to adore and use frequently. And they diminished the last years of a wonderful, wonderful woman I adored who was known for decades as Gay (her real name was May Gadd, but perhaps 80% of the people who knew her never knew her real name, but knew her only as Gay). She'd been known as that since the 1930s, not that I knew her then (quite). But in her final few years it became painful to call her that. Because she was gay in the old sense of the word, but definitely not in the new. Even in her 70s she was such a wonderful dancer that I, a single, virile man in my 20s, often sought her out over partners of my own age to truly appreciate the highly sensual underpinnings underlying English country dancing. But hating gays for that that wouldn't be homophobic anyhow because homophobia has to be irrational, according to definition, and resentment for stealing a favorite word and dininishing an old woman's last years would be a totally rational response.) |
