Mourning a Loss and Celebrating a New Vision
January 21, 2019 12:54 Book stuff | Food for Thought
Å terrible loss and a new start
My Friend Jim
A friend called from Maryland and said our friend Jim had committed suicide. He emailed me a few years back, when his wife died from cancer. I could tell then that he wanted to kill himself and emailed a friend in Maryland to see if she could help. It took a while but he did it. I don’t know if he had health issues, missed his wife, or something else had come up making this the time. I have always felt close to Jim because we had identical birthdays.
Photo from Janet Rothenhoefer from Facebook
My feelings on suicide are simple – it is a personal decision. There are those church folks that think suicides don’t deserve to be buried in a church cemetery. So much for Christian people who love each other. I feel so long as the bloody mess or body isn’t discovered by children who will be scarred forever, then deal with it. Some people just know it is time due to loss, sickness, or tragedy. It is their life and let them end it if they want.
Jim was a pre-press artist. He got our first book ready for publication. He loved crabs and beer. He also loved his wife Deb. I will miss Jim. He was funny, smart, and would give you the shirt off his back. I don’t do beer but the next time I have crabs, I will raise a crab leg to him.
Delta Airlines & Denise Chavez Stepping Up
Hats off to the Delta Airlines Foundation for donating about $82,000 to open the Martin Luther King Jr. sites in Atlanta for the holiday. It would be a crime to have this day of peace and not have open the sites that mean a lot to a lot of people just because of someone’s temper tantrum. Delta did good.
Another person who did good is Denise Chavez, author and bookstore owner from Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is connected to the American Booksellers of American Winter Institute and is having a book drive at their event in Albuquerque for the immigrant children being detained by our un-thoughtful government. She would have gotten a lot more books if New Mexico publishers and authors were involved in the event as they asked but that is another ugly story.
Barbe Awalt