On the road again: Denvention, day 6 - winding down and a sad but expected loss

The con is winding down today, and so is my involvement in it. I took advantage of this change to sleep late, which was glorious; I slept off and on for over nine hours. If I could do this for another few months, I'd be good. No such luck, of course, but a man can dream.

After much deliberation and multiple visits to the dealers' room, I decided to pass on some expensive but lovely books. Chief among them was a $300 visual history of illustrations of Lovecraft's work. I may still order that book from the dealer who had it, but for now I'm giving it a pass.

After lunch we rode the free shuttle to The Tattered Cover, a wonderful old Denver bookstore. This store and another of their three locations were out of Slanted Jack, and only one copy remained in the third, which I think is a good thing.

I'm writing this entry early today because tonight after dinner (Rioja, for the well-deserved second visit) I will have more work to do on the book plus packing. I want to get a decent amount of rest tonight, try to exercise tomorrow morning, and then brace myself for a long day of flying. We're going through DFW, and the current forecast shows storms there, so we may have a fun time. So it goes; there's no point in sweating such stuff.

And now to the sad but expected loss I mentioned in the title of today's entry.

Earlier today, Clarence Chadbourne, a man I barely knew, died. He was almost ninety. Clarence contracted polio in his twenties and ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He and his wife, Marian, who survives him, had two children, both of whom died. When I met him at the funeral of Jennie's father, Clarence had the use of one hand and little else. That day, though, he sat upright in his wheelchair, a prominent figure at this gathering of his family, his cowboy hat atop his head, and he shook hands with everyone there. He was a proud, strong, stubborn Montanan who loved Jennie, his niece, fiercely, and who kept busy and working until his body failed him utterly. He was as mean at times and as tough as a snake too long in the sun, but you had to admire his will. It was a miracle he lived as long as he did, but he was a fighter, this one, a fighter with all the heart in the world. I admire that, and though as I said I hardly knew him, I couldn't help but think of him often, and now I mourn his loss. If there's a next life, you can bet your ass he's sitting tall in a saddle, thinking it's about damn time that he's out of that chair, wondering what he needs to do first to get the land into shape, and waiting for Marian and the rest of his family to join him. RIP, Clarence.