By Kelly Mahan Jaramillo, Oct. 9th, 2007
Warning to reader: Despite this blog being primarily humorous, this first post is not, because of what happened today. They won’t all be so grim (despite a little too much death in my life these days) I promise.
Many years ago, I was given a book “Take the Long Way Home” by Susan Gordon Lydon. I have been sitting here for about ten minutes, comparing the first edition dated signed copy, irritated, because it was given to me on my birthday by a friend named Ingrid Heinze. It was given to me for a specific reason, it was a birthday gift, but for the life of me I cannot remember how old I was. I have been doing the math, the book came out in 1993, but…it does not quite jibe with what I was doing on my birthday fourteen years ago.
It does not matter. I read it, liked it, and it has travelled with me for at least 12 years. For the past few days, I have been packing up some books, and came across it. I have about a million books, but I have not felt like reading in months, due to catatonic depression that shows up every summer, each one worse than the last. It is finally starting to lift, and “Take The Long Way Home” was in one of the piles in my office that I was dispiritedly trying to organize. I flipped it open and it grabbed me. Hallelujah! I wanted to read again.
One of my little hobbies with the internet and web-pages and all this business is to contact authors whose work I enjoy and write them an e-mail. I get a huge thrill when I receive a reply. The last “snail mail” response from author Samantha Dunn is a personal treasure, it is probably the last paper response I will ever get. Still, an e-mail is very exciting.
So, I googled Susan Gordon Lydon, just as I had googled and had a brief dialogue with Sara Davidson (“Loose Change”) and Carolyn See (“Dreaming”).
What came up was that Susan Gordon Lydon had died two years ago, on July 17th. There was no point in even trying not to cry. I had been looking so forward to the fabulous internet highway connecting me with her.
Guess what I found out today. The internet just tells you they are dead. So far, the internet has yet to upgrade to sending an e-mail to the deceased one’s web-page. I am certain Apple will figure out a way soon.
For all of the younger women out there, you owe a huge debt to Susan Gordon Lydon. For all of you struggling with heroin abuse, you might want to pick up a copy. For me, even though there will be no e-mail, I am still so glad to have found her. Thank god for words.
