I can't find a good video/audio of it, but an olde timey comedian did a bit about soap operas where the couple is speaking to each other by emoting using just their names. 'John! Marsha.' 'Joooohhhhn? MARSHA!!!' etc.

Then, he talked about tuning back in after not watching for 10 years and it was 'John! Marsha.' 'Joooohhhhn. MARSHA!!!'

Being a soap fan at the time, that hit a bit too close to home. Same people. Same dialog. Different coma. But I loved it!

Thank you for your kind thoughts, Cindy and beekaytee.

"Okay" is a relative term, of course. I will be okay in the sense that I won't be suicidal, and I'll pick up the pieces and make something new of my life.

I will not be okay in the sense that living with Jacqueline is an irreplaceable gift, that we are fully woven together, warp and woof, in a complex tapestry composed entirely of amusements and jokes and riffs and play. That this tapestry will be cut from the loom and the ends tied off and it will no longer be in the making but a finished thing. A beautiful piece but done, no longer in the act of creation.

You start an improv game with a brilliant, cute, hilarious, stylish girl and you do it for twenty years and it'll spoil you for playing with anybody else.

I asked Nilly to do an epic Nillying in honor of Jacqueline. To pull all her quotes from COMM and compile them in one place.

You will all be shocked to hear that my wife is funny and has a knack for turning a phrase.

Here's one that flea saved to COMM in 2004 when JZ and I were newly living together and Emmett was 8:

"I am sneaking a break from playtime with Emmett, which has been going on nearly nonstop ever since he discovered a couple of evenings ago that I can do voices and improv snarky dialogue and bitter fights. (Almost literally nonstop--I get up at 6:30 a.m. to putter around in the kitchen, and suddenly he's at my elbow, wide awake and saying eagerly, "Can we play?")

I'm now trapped in an endless loop of playing quarrelsome identical twins lost somewhere on a limitless field of seething hot magma and sniping at each other, while he listens and smiles and smiles. I love Emmett and it's unbelievably flattering to have him seek me out and want to spend time playing with me and me alone, but I HATE THE MAGMA FIELD."

Here is amych's toast to us on the announcement of our impending marriage.

• *******

Hec and JZ,

After some thought, I decided to post this here, since you're both such an important part of this community for me, and by g-d, I want all our friends to see my big weepy sentimental wishes to you.

Hec, you've been a dear and wonderful friend to me from the time I first joined this board. I've met very few people in this life who have been as deeply generous as you, or as devoted to each of your friends as if they were your own family. And yet, you've more than met your match in JZ, who is so fiercely and wonderfully passionate that she takes my breath away.

JZ, you're simply amazing. You're beautiful, talented, charming -- and filled with such a soul that within five minutes of meeting you, I knew that all those beautiful and charming externals were nothing compared to what you really were.

The two of you together surpass all that you are individually.

If I were there in person tomorrow, I'd probably get really drunk and insist on saying all this out loud in some kind of ill-conceived attempt at a toast, and then I'd get all weepy in the middle of it and someone would take a really embarrassing video and post it online somewhere. You'll just have to fill in those parts in in your imaginations.

I love you both, and I can't imagine either of you with anyone more perfect for you. The two of you and Emmett have already made a wonderful family, and it'll only get more magical with any future baby buffistas you may make.

With much much love, Me

Both of those are so lovely, so clearly JZ (and then the toast is so on point). David, I don't have anything profound to say except we are all holding you and your family in our thoughts and sending as much love as we can.

Hec. we believe in you. That doesn't mean we don't worry about you. I'd always hoped to meet someone to be all those things for me...kind of feels that I won't. ETA: I thought I'd actually *written* that I couldn't fathom finding that person and losing them, instead of just thinking it my head, but my brother's having some work-tech drama and something weird just...kind of jumped off so I didn't finish my thought. (Although there have been times I thought you could read my mind, at least a little.)

David, that's such a beautiful way to describe what's happening, that the creation of it is over and it's instead finished, "the ends tied off." Beautiful and terribly sad, but so perfectly apt.

God, I miss amyth.

Love you, Hec.

Agreed, Amy.

Yes, this.

David, you are constantly in my thoughts. Know that we hold you close, not just now, but will continue to do so in the years to come. You have always been so generous with your kindness here, as has JZ. You have held so many of us up. Now we hold you up.

Aw, making me a little weepy at work

That this tapestry will be cut from the loom and the ends tied off and it will no longer be in the making but a finished thing.

This is so lovely. A thing that comforts me that I typically think is too weird to tell people about is that if I take the physics concept of the space-time continuum as literally representing reality the past is not just something we remember but actually existing (outside time, so while I like to use the word "still" in my head it doe4s not really apply but something like that) we just can't get there any more. And not being able to get there can hurt, but thinking it is "out there" makes me feel better. Which is all to say that "worry" is not exactly what I'm doing when I think of you (and I do pretty often these days), David, but "not worried" doesn't describe it either.