Date posted: April 13, 2006 - Thursday
Title: Another Passing
Current mood: sad
Yesterday I got this year's directory for a group I belong to. A long list of the members, their addresses and some other information about the organization.
In the front there was a list of members who had passed away in the last year. There were a few I recognized, but one stood out.
I never met the man, but he was the artist assigned to illustrate the first story I ever had published in a national magazine. He was a name fairly well known in the writing community of which I am a very small part.
Frank Kelly Freas. He was 83.
I loved the drawing he did which appeared on the title page of my story when it came out in print; the right mixture of innocence and things not quite fitting. But then it was probably typical of the quality work he turned out for years that I had seen in the magazine for a long time.
The stark words on the page announcing his passing brought home a jumble of thoughts to me. I had never met the man, but had wanted to thank him if we ever met for his work in adding to the atmosphere of my written words. And I thought about how long ago that story was published and the miserable lack of production I have made since that time.
I always felt I got into this organization on a kind of fluke. The membership requirements were easier then and I gained my membership through that first published story. But since that time I have felt like something of a fraud because I wasn't a writer who was producing with the volume and regularity of the other members.
A recent chance meeting with another member here on MySpace brought some comforting words regarding my feelings of not belonging. He pointed out even though my output was only two published stories, both had appeared in the top magazine in the field and that was good enough to confirm my credentials as a bona fide member of the group. I'm not sure I can fully accept that, but they were words I appreciated hearing.
In another part of the directory there was a list of the "Estate" members of the organization; those authors who have died and whose works are kept alive and represented by agents and family. And the list of names here read like a roster of the people I grew up reading. These were the names of people whose books lined the walls of my bedroom, whose words I poured over and took me on adventures of imagination. They were the people I wanted to be like, the ones I wanted to join. And there were so many of them.
That list too brought pangs of regret. Regret I had never met them and had the chance to share my feelings about their work. I never had the chance to talk to them about the craft and art of writing and gain from them knowledge to make myself a better practitioner of the art. And sadness in the knowledge their minds and their pens were silent now and I would never again see a new work under their name to bring me joy and wonder at the reading.
So, my thoughts now are of loss and of wasted talent and missed opportunities.
And they are of thanks for the talent of one man I never met and of colleagues who added to my own development even though they didn't know it. Thank you Mr. Freas for your fine effort on my behalf and for the years of work you contributed to the field of art. And thank you to all those authors whose flights of fancy and imagination helped mold and shape the talent I have.
