December and I have a complicated relationship. I want to like it, I do like it, but I’m very aware of the other side of things, and things always seem to go sideways or fall apart during this month for me in some form or another.
But there’s the other side to that, too, because at a certain point, you begin to…or at least try to acknowledge the good even those moments and people have had in your life. For me, December is definitely that battle of realism vs wanting to still believe and fighting to maintain that belief.
I definitely know the agony of what it’s like to lose someone right before the holidays. The anniversary of my grandfather’s death (among a handful of other personal anniversaries I’d rather forget), always gives me pause every single year. And yet (like I said in the elf post), there are bright candle sparks in the night in those moments, too, especially if they help me remember people who touched my life and made it better. And I am extremely lucky to have met a lot of amazing people full of that positive, candle-bright glow during the course of my life.
So yeah, one of those days, and we’re going to do the revisit an old blog post thing to make it a little easier. Part of it’s practical – admittedly I always feel pressured to come up with content this time of year and that with everything else can take a toll (hence all the reposts so I don’t have to think as much). More than that, though, I just plain don’t like good people to be forgotten.
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Obviously those who inspire are important to me, and I want to touch on a special one today.
I went back and forth forever about this one. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to post when it happened. December is not an easy month for me anyway, and this was the thing that made me take a break this year. Also, as of a year and a half ago I’ve lost one of my best friends and mentors, two people who pretty much helped raise me, as well as one of the biggest influences of my life. I’ve been selective in what I talk about publicly because otherwise this would be the most depressing blog ever. And, there’s that little, insidious part of me that is aware that there are people who knew him way better, who were much closer, and what do my words really mean in the scheme of things anyway?
At the end of the day, though, that’s silly, and I’m also well aware that Brooke would tell me just that, so whether these words help remember him or are just for me, here they are.
So I’ve done a lot of posts on Lost Boys through the years. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about why it was a turning point for me, and that’ll happen at a later date. Let’s just say it influenced my costume design work and obviously my writing. Somewhere between those two time frames, though, Brooke McCarter became my friend.
It feels like ages, but I suppose it was only like seven years ago that I met him at a con. Meeting Brooke was like going from being completely intimidated to talking to a good friend I hadn’t seen in forever in like twenty seconds. He has this gift to just really connect with people and I’ve always been somewhat blown away to watch that in action because it’s always genuine and from this beautiful, sincere place. We got to talking because I was near an area he’d grown up in, and I’ve got the most incongruous, out of the box collection of entertainment work experiences ever. A couple ideas were kicked around, and life went on.
Come Selahway With Me... 