i’ve sold vacuum cleaners door to door and catered holiday parties for the hell’s angels. i’ve run a bakery and a theater, driven forklifts and trucks, created fancy paint finishes, taught firearm safety, stitched frock coats, toted rocks, and slipcovered houses. i’ve had professional cause to rent camels, stencil pumpkins, and commission a giant fake butt. once, as the janitor for a circus, i cleaned up after a passel of drunken french clowns, learning, as i mopped, lessons i later drew on for my work as a fundraiser and strategic planning consultant.
i speak from experience when i declare that my latest job is odder than most:
on a sunday morning seven years ago today, i joined the grief club.
i didn’t intend for this post to be about joe barker, but instead about grief, public and private, a subject i’ve thought about a lot. however, the only way to eat a mountain is one bite at a time. so though i’ll return to this topic soon, for today, here’s what i wrote shortly after joe’s death. my dear friend will kerner read this at joe’s memorial; i haven’t heard or looked at it since. Continue reading seven years a widower→
