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I recently ran across a quotation that conveys something I have often experienced since losing my sister in November, and which I have noticed in others – most recently, a new friend – who have also lost a loved one to death:

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that, when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem almost as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we loved in life.

– Charles Dickens

Yes.

Since Krista disappeared from this earth, every joyful moment, every deep laugh, every quiet contemplation of beauty summons her memory.  I do not know how long this will continue, and I cannot decide whether I wish it to stop.

It’s like dancing a few perfect steps to a lovely but wistful song.  The moment is exquisite, but joy and grief strike a sudden heartwrenching chord and you find yourself nearly overcome.  Do you go on dancing or walk from the floor?  Either way, your heart is pierced with bittersweet.

And the song plays on.

Ricardo Montalban passed away yesterday at the age of 88.

I remember him most fondly as the delightfully maniacal Khan in my favorite Star Trek movie: Star Trek II ~ The Wrath of Kahn. In particular I always loved his intense and quasi-Shakespearean delivery of these famous lines from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (uttered to Kirk, of course):

“No, no, you can’t get away…

To the last, I will grapple with thee!

From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!

For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!”

After making a rather sarcastic remark, a reader suggests that I pull down that last post in light of the fact that Obama’s grandmother’s death has now hit the newswires (see his lovely comment for yourself).

I thought about it but don’t think I will.

The nature of a weblog is such that you operate in real time:  you write what you write when you write it…and so it becomes a historical account of news/facts as well as your thoughts and opinions about them at a given time.  

I had no idea Obama’s grandmother had passed away when I wrote that post.  And now that I know, it doesn’t change the facts of the Cali GOP’s complaint.  If Obama used campaign funds for personal use, he violated campaign law and ought to return the money.

My condolences to Obama and his family, though.