Our friend Dave Glaser died at the beginning of this month, and that was awful. We weren’t close but I admired him greatly, and we’d played together just a couple of weeks before THAT at the Ellicott City Spring Fling.
And yesterday two friends were hospitalized very suddenly – Jaqui MacMillan is the woman who Rowan was playing with when I met him at New Deal Café – and she suffered a brain aneurysm yesterday. At the moment I’m getting reports of the various surgeries they’re undertaking to relieve pressure from the brain and address the bleeding. As far as I can tell there’s a lot of optimism but it’s hard to tell… and I think it’s GENUINELY hard to tell.
And while Kristen was telling me about THAT I got word that our old drummer Alfred Kamajian had been hospitalized in Anne Arundel, unconscious and on Life support. By now, 20 hours later or so we’re still getting updates on Jaqui but Alfred opened his eyes for a bit, seemed to be responsive, but as of about half an hour had been declared dead. Apparently a rare blood cancer – I’m not clear if it’s something he was aware of or not.
I don’t have many words for all of this yet. I’m struggling at the edges of it all. I used to be good with death around me because it had been common. I’ve been lulled into complacency and now it’s suddenly present and grasping.
