Color Words

a defective valve that had somehow escaped doctors’ attention. My daughter was
eight years old. My son was two. I was a few months shy of my 38^th
birthday. It feels like it happened last week, but it also feels like it
happened ten years ago. It’s never not happening.

This
is not another love letter to Jen. I’ve written a lot of those since 2006, the
best known of which you can read here. Nor is this a meditation on Jen and the
experience of losing Jen by way of criticizing somebody else’s art. Anybody
who’s read me for any length of time will tell you that I do that second thing
pretty regularly, in the course of reviewing films and TV programs, and of course,
when writing obituaries. Sometimes I mention her name, but most of the time
she’s an unremarked upon presence binding my words together and keeping the
tone on track. She always was my best editor.