Five years

People love to set benchmarks at 5 and 10 year increments. They seem more important. 5 years feels like a weighty chunk of time. A lot happens in 5 years.

5 years ago yesterday on November 29, 2011, sometime around 6 PM, I received a phone call from my dad that changed my life forever. A lot has happened since then.

Cassie and I got engaged. I got my career going in the right direction finally. Got married on a hot August day in West Seattle and celebrated into the night with all our friends and family. Had a reception in St. Paul, Minnesota, for all of Cassie's extended family. Bought a house in Seattle. Adopted another dog. Fostered a dog. Decided to have a kid and now we stand on the precipice of parenthood, just a short 2 months away.

And all of it without my mom. My biggest source of emotional support and encouragement for 28 years.

Looking back on those accomplishments is interesting, bittersweet, and kinda astounding. I can't tell you a damn thing about the last month of 2011 or any of 2012. Have no strong memories of anything I did. It's all in a haze of grief. 2013 is when I started to come out of it a bit and things have gotten better with each advancing year, I think. I still get really sad sometimes. Often I still feel like I have this hole in me that will never be full again.

Today, November 30, is my mom's 68th birthday. 68 seems so young these days. I can imagine her as still being vibrant, full of life, and clamoring to give guidance and support to Cassie and me (especially Cassie) during the pregnancy. I can picture her holding our daughter, her granddaughter, and weeping with pride and joy.

I think of her and all she taught me constantly through every major step of preparing to be a parent. Her wisdom, my memories of her, and the love she gave me are all I have left of her and I intend to pass all it onto my daughter any way I can, every day I draw breath.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho. Ho. Ho."

There is a Hans Gruber-sized hole in my heart today.

It’s hard to overstate the impact that DIE HARD had on me when I first rented the VHS from Safeway in the mid 90s. The movie, John McClane, Hans Gruber, saying "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" to my shithead friends…..all instantly became obsessions of mine and like a fine wine, the movie has only gotten better and better with age. Alan Rickman’s performance is a huge part of why it’s so rewatchable. He chews scenery effortlessly and without making it obvious that he’s hamming it up. His line delivery is slow, enunciated, and precise. Yes, it is plainly obvious that he is an English Shakespearean trained actor playing a German person, but he just. fucking. owns it. His character is complex. He’s not just evil, though he is certainly a bad man, but he is after a specific goal of the Nakatomi fortune and uses brilliant subterfuge to hide this intention only to be undone by a scrappy New York cop in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can’t plan for everything, Hans.

Think of how many action movies you’ve seen since 1989 or so where the plot was basically "Die Hard on a plane/boat/spaceship/national park/white house" and the person playing the villain is like "welp, better channel some Hans fuckin’ Gruber for this role and just go for it." Countless flicks.

As a lifelong action movie devotee, DIE HARD is basically my Sistine Chapel. Yes, there are other equally worthy monuments to violence and excess in cinema, but DIE HARD stands on it's own in an era full of amazing action flicks. A huge part of that movie is now gone and we're all poorer for it. We'll never see another era like the 1980s cinema and we'll never see another Alan Rickman.

REST IN POWER.