Decade

One more post for today, this time to mention a somber anniversary.

Exactly ten years ago, I got a phone call informing me that my mom had been found dead at home. She would be joined the following year by my dad, who died in a hospital up in Roseville with both sons at his side.

For years afterward, I would often see people who reminded me enough of my mom that I'd do a double-take. That never happened with my dad though.

My initial reaction to the news was an icy kind of shock. I had just gotten back from a photo shoot in Oakland involving the band High On Fire and a bunch of snakes (I provided the snakes, hence my involvement). The snakes were spread around my studio apartment in travel cages (my apartment was small, so all of the snakes lived up at camp), and I remember leaving my snake-filled apartment and driving to my mom's house. I had to confirm that the body was actually hers, and I had to make the hardest phone calls I've ever had to make, to my brother and my dad. I was in too much shock to even cry.

Life goes on for the rest of us though, and suddenly it's ten years later.