4 Responses to “Grant Lee, RIP”
Jenn Parker says:
May 10th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
If you are telling the truth (sorry to sound so callous, but I don’t know you, and given your blogging history, your agenda, it’s entirely plausible you are making this up to bolster your position, as it were), I’m very sorry for your loss.
I don’t know what to believe though. Look at your first sentence: It finally happened. Maybe this is just a throw away phrase written while in the throes of grief, however it seems like an odd line to lead your post. It finally happened. It sounds like not only were you anticipating such an event, but are welcoming it so your version of reality could somehow be verified.
I find it impossible to believe that doctors would give the family of the deceased no cause of death, or a fraudulent cause of death as you are implying. To what benefit or end would such a practice serve?
And please see and respond to the links and aneurysm statistics I quoted in your earlier post.
squirrelmonkey says:
May 10th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I’m so, so sorry to hear this, Becca. Poor Grant.
Take care of yourself and ignore that Jenn Parker troll. Call me if you feel up to it, okay?
beast says:
May 11th, 2009 at 3:36 am
sorry about your friend its so scarey that were all gonna die
anonymous says:
May 12th, 2009 at 10:56 am
I’ve spent the past week doing nothing but reading obituaries from every newspaper I can find online. I read Grant Lee’s obit and followed links to his MySpace and then here to your blog.
My son died last week. I was with him in the backyard when he just folded in on himself, falling to the grass. His eyes were closed and blood trickled out of his ears. He was only six. I suppose that his young age is supposed to make it worse, but it can’t be any worse for me.
I’m afraid to write his name, as if writing it here makes what happened to him more final than it already is.
Someone else, not me, wrote my son’s obituary. I don’t remember who. They did a terrible job.
When we first came home, after leaving his body at the hospital, I went into his room and found some crumpled up drawings under his bed. There were two figures in black on the paper, monstrously sized, but human, small heads, no mouths, just two circles for eyes, but all black. They had black guns and they sprayed black bullets all over the page. The bullets were hard slashes, big as knives, black too, and they curved. I have no idea what it means or where it came from.
Was it a sketch of a nightmare, did he see something on TV he shouldn’t have, was he drawing these scenes with friends at school? Why did he crumple the drawings up and stuff them under his bed? Did he think that they were ‘bad’ that he couldn’t show them to me, talk about it with me, that I’d be so upset with him that I’d feel differently about him if I were to see the pictures?
It’s this last scenario that sends me to the computer and reading other people’s obituaries.
A Grim Anniversary
Becca Gilman • April 12th, 2009
* * *
The Blog at the End of the World has been live for a year now. I thought it worth revisiting my first post. On March 20th, 2008, in Mansfield, MA; a fourteen-year-old boy died suddenly during his school’s junior varsity’s baseball practice (Boston globe), and two days later, a fifteen-year-old-girl from the same town died at her tennis practice (Boston Globe). The two Mansfield residents both had sudden, catastrophic brain aneurysms.
So why am I bringing up those two kids again? Why am I dragging out the old news when you could open up any newspaper in the country, click on any blog or news gathering site, and read the same kind of stories only with different names and faces and places?
Despite the aid of hindsight and my general, everyday paranoia, I’m not prepared to unequivocally state that the teens mentioned above are our patient zeroes. However, I do think it worth noting those reported stories were mainstream media’s story zero concerning the cerebral aneurysm pandemic and the first of their type to go national, and shortly thereafter, global.
And, finally, a one-link Link roundup:
—New York Times reports widespread shortages on a host of anti-clotting and anti-seizure drugs used to treat aneurysms. Included in the shortage, are medications that increase blood pressure, with the idea that increased blood flow through potentially narrowed vessels would prevent clots and aneurysms. Newer, more exotic drugs are also now being reported as in shortage: nimodipine (a calcium channel blocker that prevents blood vessel spasms) and glucocorticioids (anti-inflammatory steroids, not FDA approved, controversial treatment that supposedly controls swelling in the brain). The gist of the story is about the misuse of the medications (many of which are only meant for survivors of aneurysm and aren’t preventative), of course, leads to a whole slew of other medical problems, including heart attack and stroke.
6 Responses to “A Grim Anniversary”
revelations says:
April 24, 2009 at 10:23 am
Your a fear monger. You spread fear and the lies of the Godless, liberal media. GOD will punish you!!!!
Jenn Parker says:
April 24, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I have no doubt the Times story is true, but only because of the panic. This story does not prove there really is a pandemic of aneurysms. Only that the general public believes there is one.
Please follow my links here, and it really is as simple as it sounds: The reality is that on average, since 2000, 50,000 Americans die from brain aneurysms (spontaneous cerebral hemorrhaging) per year, with 3-6% of all adults having aneurysms inside their brains (fortunately, most are so small they’re never noticed). There is no recorded evidence of that 50,000 number swelling to unprecedented levels. Please show me my error!
There is no conspiracy. It’s the 21st Century Red Scare. Our zeitgeist is so pre-occupied with apocalypse we’re making one up because the real one isn’t getting here soon enough. Yes, 50K is a small percentage of the population, but it’s a large enough number that if a preponderance of aneurysm cases were to get press coverage, as they clearly are, it gives a multi-media appearance of a pandemic and a conspiracy to cover it up. Unless you can provide some hard data/evidence—like our government and the W.H.O can provide—please stop. Just stop. There’re plenty more real threats (economic, environmental, geopolitical) that sorely need to be addressed.
grant says:
April 24, 2009 at 10:10 am
Has it been only a year? Fuck a flyin’ fuckin’ duck.
I was at the CVS pharmacy on Central Park Ave. today—just picking up “supplies” ;) —and there was a huge fucking line in the pharmacy section with two armed policeman wandering around the store. Muscles and guns and sunglasses. Some good, hot, homoeroticism there, Becks.
My fuck-headed fellow shoppers were walking all around the CVS, wearing hospital masks and emptying the already empty shelves of vitamins and who the fuck knows what else. Most of them were buying shit they’d never need, just buying stuff because it was there. It was surreal, and I gotta tell ya, they got to me! I ended up buying some leftover Easter candy. Fucking Peeps. Don’t even like them, but you know, when society collapses, I just might need me some yellow fucking Peeps!
Stop by the PJ tonight, Becks. I’m working a double-shift. I’ll bring the Peeps.
tiredflower says:
April 24th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I’m one of those fuckheads who wears a hospital mask when I go out now. I know it doesn’t protect or save me from anything, but it makes me feel better. I know it scares other people when they see me in it, so I tried to cover it up by drawing a smile on the mask with a pink sharpie. I’d hoped it would make people smile back. I’m not a good drawer, though, and it d
oesn’t look like a smile. It’s a snarl, bared teeth, the nanosecond before a scream. It’s my only mask. I should throw it away and get a new mask, but I can’t. It’s my good luck charm.
grant says:
April 24, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Drawing mouths on the hospital masks is fuckin’ brilliant!
Becks, bring some masks (I know you have some!) to the PJ tonight. I’ll help you decorate them. I’ve got some killer ideas. I’m serious, now, bring some masks. I want to wear one when I go out tomorrow.
bnl44 says:
September 23, 2009 at 2:34 am
I saw someone die today. We were part of a small crowd waiting for our subway train. She was standing next to me, listening to an iPod. It was loud enough to hear the drums and baseline. Didn’t recognize the song, but I tried. When our train arrived she collapsed. I felt her body part the air and despite all the noise in the station, I heard her head hit the concrete. It was a hard and soft sound. Then, her iPod tune got louder, probably because the earphones weren’t in her ears anymore.
I don’t know if anyone helped her or not. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t help her. I was so scared. She fell and I raced onto the train, and waited to hear the doors shut behind me before I turned around to look. The windows in the doors were dirty, black with grime, and I didn’t see anything.
The People Who Live Near Me
George has been there all morning, just standing in the middle of the street. I can’t quite tell what he’s up to because I’m in my second-floor bedroom and he’s three houses away, but something is going on with that poor guy, and I’m going to find out what it is.
Nick-Nick is downstairs pawing through my groceries. I didn’t hear him come in, but there’s the rustle of paper and plastic bags and the moving and stacking of my canned goods. He tries not to be loud but he’s an alarm, just like every morning. He looks for the bag of peanut M&Ms. He won’t find it this time because I didn’t buy any. Sure, he’ll pout and probably even leave a little early today, all to make me feel guilty. It takes more than that to make me feel guilty.
“It’s hotter than an ass after a chilli eatin’ contest,” Nick-Nick says. He’s trying to hide his M&M disappointment. Trying to be an adult about it. I appreciate the effort.
But he’s right. It’s damn hot. I say, “Don’t matter. I still need my walk.” I’m not going to tell him about George. I want to find out what’s really going on before I get Nick-Nick’s two cents. “The web MD recommends brisk exercise for men in my size and age group.”
“Sure he does.”
“Who says the web MD is a he?”
Nick-Nick dances two steps away from me. Afraid I’m going to whack that pointy, bald head of his, even though I’ve never hit him before. He says, “No one, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I turn on my lawn sprinklers. Little green frogs with big sad eyes and big sad mouths surround each spigot, rigged so the water shoots out of those big sad mouths. One frog spits all over Nick-Nick’s jean cut off shorts. Then we watch the frogs spit on my grass. We could watch that all day, and we have.
I say, “Whenever someone says they didn’t mean anything by it, it means they meant everything by it.”
Nick-Nick’s mouth goes all sprinkler-frog on me. I’m not saying that he spits on me, but his mouth hangs open, big and sad. First the M&Ms and now me giving him a hard time over the web MD; he wonders why I’m pissed at him. But I’m not pissed. I’m just concerned about George, and it’s making me irritable.
We walk. First, we pass the Booths’ house. The empty-nesters of the neighbourhood. Biggest house in the development. Well, it isn’t a development, really. More like a cul-de-sac. Their four-bedroom colonial is well kept, but their dryer is broken. Has been for two months.
Nick-Nick says, “The Booths are cheaper than a penny whore.”
“Might be they’re just too lazy to buy a new dryer.”
Mrs. Booth doesn’t want a clothesline on her land. It’d look too trashy. The Booths fly to Vegas every two months. I trust them to know what is trashy. So no clothesline, but their wet clothes are on hangers and they dangle off the gutters, windowsills on all three floors, deck, branches on their crab apple tree out back, and even on the handle of the lawnmower. When the wind kicks up, I get parachute-sized undergarments sprinkling my lawn, covering my frogs. I keep a big cardboard box on my stoop for their linen collection.
Nick-Nick pulls a can of beer out of his pocket. Up next: the Flynns’ split-level ranch. Chocolate-coloured. Or mud.
I say, “Would you look at that?”
Nick-Nick says, “Flynnie has officially gone ’round the bend.”
Flynnie is the Yard Guy of our neighbourhood. His lawn is immaculate, golf-course clean. He’s building his third storage shed next to the other two (one red like a hydrant and the other blue like toilet bowl cleaner) and the two swing sets. Sheds and swing sets take up half of his land. He didn’t get the town’s permission for any of them. Proof to Nick-Nick that Flynnie is crazy.
Then there is the orthodox Jews’ house. Goddamn me, I don’t remember their last name. Husband’s name is Howie, Israeli wife, and two kids. Nice family. Little Cape house, kind of a white-grey. Knee-high crabgrass and weeds overgrow their yard. No real lawn anywhere to be seen.
Nick-Nick says, “I wonder if mowing is against their religion.”
Howie doesn’t have a mower. He has a weed whacker, and he whacks those weeds maybe twice a summer. That’s if his Irish-Catholic neighbour, Flynnie, doesn’t mow the weeds for him. Flynnie does mow Howie’s land often, but not for the right reasons.
I say, “I don’t think that’s funny at all.”
“You know I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Nick-Nick falls in behind me right after he says it. We are at the end of the cul-de-sac, and George’s house.
There isn’t a cul-de-sac at the end of my street. Don’t know why I said that. But I’ll add this: the road just ends at George’s house. Well, the paved road ends. There’s a dirt road that continues for fifty feet, but dies out in overgrowth. Before the Booths, Flynns, Jews, and George, that dirt road spilled out onto Central Street, but with the new development (Did I say my neighbourhood wasn’t a development? Well, it really is a development, all except my house, my house was here first, then everything else developed around me), they decided to close off one end of the road so us developmentees wouldn’t have to deal with thru-traffic. That was nice of them, keeping our best interests in mind like that.
George is still standing in the middle of street, where the blacktop and dirt road meet, the poor bugger.
I wave and say, “How’s it hanging?”
Nick-Nick burps.
George has on exactly half of his work clothes. Suit pants, tan, but he’s wearing a different colour tan button-up short sleeve shirt that doesn’t really go with anything. But he obviously isn’t going to work.
I say, “Beautiful day, eh?”
I’ve always liked George. He’s friendly, smiling, never yelling or building sheds or neglecting his lawn or letting underwear fly onto my yard. Quiet guy, in his late fifties. George and his father moved here about four years ago. George and his dad did everything together. They used to read the paper or play cards on their porch, take weekend trips to Canada, or to somewhere they’d never been before. George’s father was a good guy too, much friendlier and outgoing, even loud, but in a good way, a way that included you in his loudness. Heck, I even played cribbage with the old fella a few times. That old Canuck used to swear at me in French, whoop my ass all over the cribbage board and laugh like crazy. George’s father died a couple of years ago, and it’s been just George ever since. He has a younger brother and sister who are still local, and they used to come around all the time. But since the father died, I don’t remember seeing them or anyon
e else come to the house.
So we’ll call George our Lonely Guy of the neighbourhood. The one everyone pities.
Nick-Nick answers even though I was asking George about the beautiful day. “It’s prettier than that Madonna lady.” Nick-Nick wanders off to the side of the road, pretending to be interested in gravel.
I say, “Playing hooky? Or is it one of those personal days that if you don’t use it by the end of the quarter you lose it?”
George nods. He always sounds nervous when he’s speaking. Or nodding.
Okay, so why has George spent his morning in the middle of the street? The mail hasn’t come yet. He isn’t gathering garbage cans. He stands at the line where the cracking pavement gives way to dirt road. He stands with his arms folded behind his back. He’s hiding something.
It’s tough to keep a conversation going with him, so I ask him a random question. “You ever do any acting, George?”
He shakes his head and keeps his arms folded behind his back.
“Well, I used to do some in college, and then a couple community plays after. Nothing big.”
Nick-Nick walks across the street to the other side of the road, like he’s that chicken in everyone’s joke. He’s so rude. I don’t know what his problem is. He finishes his beer and says, “I bet you did some acting in college,” but he says it with his back to us.
In the Mean Time Page 13