Saturday, January 30, 2010

Almost a year...

As a kid, I remember being irritated by clichés. A large part of my life was spent with my Grandparents, so I was subjected to a litany of them. My least favorite was "time flies."

As a kid, time never flies. Ever.

Even after I got out of school, time seemed to crawl. I wandered aimlessly through my twenties, wondering if I would ever see evidence of time "flying." Working in the electronics department at Wal Mart, time most certainly does not fly. Moving from town to town in radio was hard, but still, a year seemed like two.

My thirties, however, were a different story. Weekends started to feel like one day instead of two. Time spent with my daughter was fleeting and before I knew it, I was forty.

In 2004, I started blogging and came to know a fella named Gene Maudlin, alias Old Horsetail Snake. At first our relationship consisted only of blog comments. Then one night, as I struggled through a divorce, he reached out with a phone call and we talked for a couple of very reassuring hours.

Gene was a good man. Unfortunately, he was also in his later years, and had been a smoker most of his life. For him, time definitely flew.

I went to his blog one day and found an announcement that he had passed away. He's been gone now for almost a year... yet I can still pull up his blog. I read several entries from it tonight. For those of us who only knew Gene via the online world, he will never die. In this realm, time stands still.

Weird thing, the Internet. Every modification of every website... every single click of a key... is a snapshot in time. A placekeeper to remind us what was happening in that tiny sliver of a moment.

Good night, Gene. Your blog buddy misses you. Thanks for making it possible, via your blog, for us to still visit now and then...

8 comments:

C said...

i too read gene's blog but slipped away the last year or so... i did not know he passed. thanks for saying. i will go back and check his last entries.
he seemed like such a good hearted man.

c

Clippy Mat said...

I didn't know this. I remember reading his comments and sometimes his blog when I'd been over here. That's sad.
:-(
It's good that you got to make that connection with him tho' through each of your blogs.
It's also nice that you honoured him here.
well said.

Summergirl said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Summergirl said...

Wow. It's wonderful how people touch our lives in ways we never expected.

Violet said...

Check out this recent article from NPR regarding how the perception of time changes as people age. Pretty interesting.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122322542

Violet said...

That link doesn't seem to work. Probably have to cut/paste. Sorry.

CP said...

Strange coincidence.

I was going through some old blog posts from 2005/2006 and found some of your old comments on my blog. Remembered what a good time we used to have bantering back and forth...so I figured I'd stop by and say hello.

And here you are, deep in the throes of a memory of an old blogger friend as well.

Isn't that just crazy? Strange and wonderful world.

Hope you are doing well, Dave. Stop by sometime and say hi again...if you remember who I am that is. :)

CP

Lee Ann said...

Wow, time has flown by since we first started blogging. I did not know him, but it is sad when a blogger friend passes away or we lose touch. There is definitely a connection between those of us in blogworld. May he rest in peace.
Hope all is well with you Dave. Take care!
Lee Ann