Remembering Holly

Taken at a pizza place in Little Five Points, Atlanta before we went to Dragon*Con in 2002

This is another post that has been sitting in Drafts for years that I finally decided to wrap up and post.

My first memory of Holly Blain isn’t actually a memory about her at all. It’s a memory about her brother, Beau.

I was sitting in the gym at Tyrone Middle School, when this kid I had never met before walks up to me. “Hi,” he says. “My name is Beau. My sister says you play Dungeons and Dragons and we should be friends.”

And, just like that, we were.

Holly was one year ahead of me at Tyrone, and we must have known each other in some kind of very tangential way, but I don’t remember ever really associating with her before that day. But somehow or other she knew that Beau and I should be friends, so she told her brother to go up to me and make it happen.

She did that kind of thing all the time. When Holly decided that something should be a certain way, she just expected the world to fall in line. If you didn’t know her, this behavior would come off as kind of selfish and irritating. I’ll be honest with you – it came off as a bit selfish and irritating even if you did.

But here’s what you have to understand about Holly. Here’s why Holly was so damn special. Holly did what she wanted to do, when she wanted to do it, and she believed that we should all be able to do that, and she would do anything in her power to make sure that you had the kind of freedom she wanted for herself.

I guess I can only explain this by way of personal example. When we were young, and going to Bennigan’s every Tuesday night to dance, Holly would go whether or not she had the money to get in the door. If she didn’t, she’d just count on being able to find someone who was willing to pay her way or convince the door man to let her in for free “this one time.” Annoying, right? But if she found out you wanted to go and didn’t have the money to get in the door, she’d offer to find a way to get you in as well. Whenever Holly came over to my house she would jump on my computer and use it without asking my permission first, and if you know anything at all about me you know I’m highly personal when it comes to my electronic devices (and, in defense of my highly protective nature, one time when she did this she saw something in my email that she really should not have seen). I had to start locking my computer and enable a guest account whenever she came around. Holly was the kind of person who had no problem whatsoever with someone using her computer without asking, so it never occurred to her to ask to use mine. If Holly was cold at my house she would adjust the thermostat, but if a guest was cold in her house she would expect them to do the same. You see my point? Holly did whatever she wanted to do, and she wanted YOU to do whatever YOU wanted to do, and if those two things happened to conflict with each other you just talk it out and smile and move on and keep on loving each other.

When I learned that she was flying to Texas to go to Butt-Numb-A-Thon even though her application had not been approved, I just had to smile. That was so very typical of Holly. Deny her admission to an event? Fine. She’d go anyway and hope she could change your mind once she got there, and even if she couldn’t she’d just enjoy the experience of trying.

That was Holly.

I started this post shortly after Holly passed last year. I did so knowing I would be heading to her memorial service and I wanted to get my thoughts sorted out before I did so. What I said at the service was pretty close to what I ended up writing here. I worried then that perhaps I might offend someone by what I was saying. Unless you really paid attention to what I was saying it was kind of easy to misinterpret my words as a criticism of her behaviors and personality when that was the exact opposite of what I was trying to do. I had the same feelings when I spoke at the funeral of her brother, Beau, where I also had words that were, perhaps, not the standard things you would hear in a eulogy.

But if there is one thing that I loved and admired about both of them it’s that they were very self-aware. They knew who they were, and how society perceived them, and it didn’t bother them if perhaps some of those perceptions cast them in a negative light.

As I get older and become more and more “conservative” and set in my ways, I think often of them and wonder how long they would have been able to keep that up. I know it’s a very unconventional way to think about a person, but as I frequently do I think about the quote from the end of Batman: The Dark Knight. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Part of me believes that Holly and Beau were powerful enough forces of nature that they would have successfully fought the push to compromise on their core beliefs as they got older, and part of me is thankful I never had to see the opposite happen. 

Which is a very selfish way of remembering them, I suppose, but there it is. 

[Frustration Hits YOU for 1000]

I put out to the universe that I wanted to do two things before I went into surgery to remove my Neuroendocrine Tumor. I wanted to be in Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and I wanted to go to Dragon Con with my son. The universe answered by giving me a double (or very extended) dose of COVID-19 that, combined with the fact that I had plans to go to Dragon Con that I was unwilling to cancel because of the fact that my son was going with me, resulted in the mutual decision to recast my role in the show. The icing on the cake is that my son was unable to join me (a fact I did not discover until I was already in Atlanta for the convention).

Needless to say the universe told me to go blow.

I had a fine time at the convention, and I do not regret going, but it cost me a lot. Maybe too much, but I’m trying to look at the bright side. I’m meeting with my surgeon at the Moffitt Cancer Center on September 26th, and when I do I won’t have to put off starting my treatments until after the show closes. Small comfort, but I’m taking what I can.

But speaking of bitter pills…figures that we’ve been able to avoid catching COVID for over two and a half years and caught it just in time for it to screw up my plans to do a show I really wanted to do. More than a bit mad about that one, too.

Anyway, not much else to report on the health front. While I’m over the coronavirus, it combined with my cancer to be a major drain on my energy. I’m only just now, weeks later, starting to feel like I’m back to some semblance of normal. I’ve been paying very close attention to the signs my body is giving me, resting when I need to, eating when I need to, and just being gentle with myself as not to do anything that could further hinder my ability to get the tumor removed.

Fun bonus content! I have a polyp in my colon that has high levels of dysplasia. What this means, in a very abbreviated way, is that it is pre-cancerous but needs to be removed. It is, as my doctor so delicately put it, “big and ugly.” So I’ve got more surgery to look forward to. I’m hoping it can be done while I’m in the hospital to have the NET removed.

Oh, just as an FYI to those who were members – I decided to take down the Caring Bridge site. I’ll still be posting information here, and when I go into surgery Lisa will be keeping my immediate family up-to-date on my status. With everything we have going on dealing with this it was just one more thing to keep track of and I needed to prioritize what was best for my mental well being in that regard. I’m pretty vicious about cutting out stressors in my life at the moment, and that was one I did not need.

[Insert Title Here]

I’d love to say I have some kind of well thought out, eloquent post in me. I do not. My sad, neglected blog is likely to remain just that for the foreseeable future, and this post won’t break that trend. This is just a thought dump. A “what’s going on with me” that most of you will likely gloss over if you even bother to read it in the first place.

Man, that sure sounded emo.

Continue reading

Dragon*Con an-tic-i-pation

So it’s pretty much a done deal – We’re going to be at Dragon*Con this year. As such, I’m already geeking out and excited over some of the guest that have been confirmed on the D*C web site.

Mira Furlan – Delenn from Babylon 5 (and apparently she’s on, or was on, Lost too)
Stephen Furst – Vir Kodo from Babylon 5 (and Flounder from Animal House)
Traci Lords – Hottie. I think she does some Sci-Fi stuff, too.
Erin Moran – Joanie, baby! Happy Days are here again!
Peter David – Always a blast.

And, of course, the Cruxshadows.

Yay!