My plans for the evening got cancelled. Well, postponed. An obligation ran long and I had to call the day and stay in the rest of my evening, which is fine considering.
I had missed a call from my studiomate while thrifting this morning. I hadn’t yet returned the call.
The phone rang later than he is usually up and his number showed up on the ID… but it wasn’t Michael, it was his partner, Little Michael. Michael is in the hospital. He is barely conscious. LM is certain that this is the start of the end. I would agree.
Michael has been in a steady decline for over half a year now. Things only ever got stable, never better.
After a two week delay, I got a message on Friday from the landlord’s office. They offered a two year lease, which I wasn’t expecting, and a seven percent increase, which I can’t really afford on my own. The situation of me living in the space makes it difficult to find another studiomate. This is the hard decision for me, but in my mind I have already made it.
I do hate the idea of needing to find a new place, but I need cheaper than this space, and I wouldn’t mind a clean break from all of the stuff here that isn’t mine…
I will go to see Michael tomorrow after work; this isn’t something I should put off very long…
Oddly, this is the first death of a friend to which I will be up close. All the rest have died while I was living elsewhere (either they moved, or I did.) or had never been in close proximity in the first place…
I have known Michael longer than anyone else in KCMO; I met him while he was visiting family in Phoenix, while I still lived there. He has been an unerring friend and a great support, both for my art and for myself. Our mutual needs offered me a living option when I needed it most desperately back when I realized I needed to leave my most recent ex-partner. He helped generously with the rent here, even though he only stored stuff here, at least at first, at least while he could. He supported my art regularly, not just with inspirational ideas and suggestions, but with his preparator skills for framing and matting, and by buying multiple prints and cards and drawings, as well as commissioning an original diptych shortly after I moved here to KCMO.
At the moment, I am quite well-grounded. Part of it is real, and part of it is numbness, I am certain, from the shock of all this upheaval in my life. Some point in the near future, I am sure it will hit, and that will be fine. I am not bothered by crying, or the sadness of such things as death… At least with Michael, I got to watch it coming, instead of all these instant deaths of late.
*sigh*
This rots. Big time.
gryphon's hole 