The Kt we loved

The Kt we loved
"I just might hurt you if you don't move that camera." — Kt

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Five Years

Five years ago today, the world changed, for me and Anita and all the people who knew and loved Katie.

And there isn’t much more to say than that. People often say something “changed my world”, but what they usually really mean is just that it was a big deal, not that it had permanent impact.

Our lives really did change that day. Katie was our daughter, our student, our niece, our cousin, our friend. She was a bright light, a force of nature. Every day we get up and go about our business, and on a good day we don’t spend too much time missing her, although not doing so also feels wrong, like a betrayal. But we don’t forget.

We sometimes manage to go longer periods without thinking about her because time has scabbed over the wound. It hasn’t healed—it will never heal—but there is a scab there, one that anniversaries like this pick at, breaking bits loose. And like picking at scabs when we were kids, it hurts but also feels good, because she was so important to us.

I know she’d appreciate the following, one of many underrated Davy Jones tracks:

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We've got five years, that's all we've got

                        — David Bowie, Five Years

Monday, March 9, 2015

People who knew me or Katie would often meet the other and after only a few minutes, look at us and say, "OK, you're definitely related", based on our warped senses of humor.

And I kept coming across things this weekend that Katie wold have liked:


 I can't imagine what the rest of that book is like, but I'd like to see it!

Then there's this:
(OK, looks like Blogger won't let me show that picture, perhaps a copyright issue; try http://themetapicture.com/i-had-my-suspicions/)
Nice mixture of Sesame Street and Dr. Seuss there. Not an easy mashup to justify, but this one manages.

And finally, I was listening to CBC yesterday on XM, to a program talking about radicalization (apparently Canada, with a tenth the population of the U.S., has more people heading over to fight with ISIS than the States, which is bizarre). A caller was trying to sound reasoned and said, "I'm not just talking about radical Islam: there are radical separatists, and radical animal rights people, and radical Buddhists..." and I thought, "Radical Buddhists?! What do they do, tell you 'Become one with everything or...don't'??" (Actually it turns out he was right, there are radical Buddhists—who knew?)

Miss ya, kid.