Kage Baker was well aware that bad shit happens and doesn’t care about schedules or plans. People get sick, you get a headache or the stomach flu or a piece of the broken antique vase you just smashed  in your heel. It all happens to everyone, all the time.

She felt the most ladylike thing to do was not to talk about it. If she was too ill to attend a function, she just said she didn’t feel well; no details, no grisly anecdotes. It was why she did not announce her cancer diagnosis, or blog the progress of the disease. Until literally the last two weeks or so of her life, the only other person who officially knew she was terminal was me – except for a couple of our closest friends,whom I had told because I was losing my fricking mind and whom I swore to silence.

After Kage was dead, I recounted all of it I could. She wouldn’t have minded; she told me so. She just didn’t want to deal with it herself; and as she observed: “I get to choose. I’m the one who’s dying, after all.”

My day has been fuzzy and confused, the entire household suffering from a long-standing sleep debt. It seems to have caught up to everyone at once. Since the demands of the day haven’t lessened or gone away, it’s been a pretty brain-dead day around here. And the evening has gone to hell in a hand basket. I suspect it will be another night of vigils, though Kimberly and I will probably take turns … I can no longer stay awake for 4 days at a time with no side effects, but I can still stay awake longer than poor Kimberly. Then I fall over and speak in tongues …

Tomorrow, Dear Readers, I shall be jolly and cheerful again. I shall write about writing, and about Kage, and how it was with her when she was batting ideas around inside her head, trying to pick a topic on which to write. Maybe I can share a few that never saw the light of day.

As Kage once wrote in a poem about Mnemosyne: I have the blueprints for everything.