Goodbye - Gilda Radner

Goodbye - Gilda Radner



Bill Murray on Gilda Radner:

"Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”

- from Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

Writing - I Almost

Writing - I Almost

I almost clicked on your name tonight.  I saw you pop up for but a scant second the first time in a while I had caught it.  The green blinking button of 'available' taunted me on.  I almost clicked on your name tonight.  But I didn't.

I didn't because I didn't have anything to say.  I didn't because I had nothing to talk about.  I didn't because I imagined you would not be interested in anything I had been doing.  That we had become such different people, living different lives.  That what we remembered of one another was from a decade hence.  I didn't click on your name because I didn't want to have to explain.  I didn't want to sort out whether or how much joy I should convey, how much happiness.

I didn't because I don't know how honest I can, or should be with you.

I didn't click on your name because we haven't spoken in forever, we haven't left one another a message in...years.  We do this strange little dance around each other on our birthdays, leave cookie cutter messages and cookie cutter 'like' clicks.  I wonder if you are caught up with the whirlwind that is my world.  I wonder if I'm caught up with yours.  I can't be.  We haven't spoken.

I didn't click on your name because that's energy, to reconnect.  To hear the stories about.  To hear you talk about your dog or your cat, your girlfriend or your boyfriend.  Your wife.  Your husband.  Your son.  Or daughter.

Or your new car.

I didn't click on your name because you found me boring, a decade before.  You found me boring because I wasn't worth getting to know, in your mind at least.  Maybe that's still true.  Maybe you'd still find me boring.  That's alright.  I understand that.

I didn't click on your name, because I'm afraid the sound of your laugh might not be the same as I remember it.

Life - Forget

Life - Forget

To be willingly forgotten, is to be cast away and the memory removed.  To be willingly forgotten.  To pretend the memories never existed, and pretend and wish and dream so hard that they never did.  To alter truth, and time, and space.  To willingly forget you knew a person.  To cast them adrift, in a sea of nothings that had never been, and become to one another as strangers again.

Without the light of acknowledgement in your eyes, did we ever know each other once?

I am pleased.

To have made your acquaintance. 

Life - Don't Go

Life - Don't Go

"Please don't go tomorrow...please don't leave." - She said.

And my heart broke.

I have to, but I wish I didn't.

Life brings us together for such short meetings and partings...that is the way of it.