lhskarka | Dec. 31st, 2009

I fell in love at the end of the 80s. The guy was tall and thin and pale, with wild black Robert Smith-y kind of hair and strange eyes. He dressed in black a lot, and his fashion sense was kind of all over the place, but I liked it best when he went around barefoot in a scrubby old t-shirt and jeans, black, of course. He could be a little scary to hang out with when we first met, although he got better. He also had the coolest older sister in the history of ever, and she was never afraid to tell him when he was being a jerk, which probably helped.

We stayed together long enough for him to go to college with me, but hanging out with him didn't always fit into my budget, and I'm sorry to say that we had drifted apart by the mid-90s. So I wasn't with him when he died, even though I heard about it when it happened. And even though I attended his wake, it just didn't seem very real to me - one might almost say, dreamlike - until this past weekend. I had a good, long cry over him Sunday morning, because I'm over 35 and inclined to be sentimental, and I finally read the issue where Death takes him.

I'm talking, of course, about Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming; Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

gmskarka gave me the third and fourth volumes of The Absolute Sandman for Christmas, as well as the Absolute Death collection. This was, trust me, an awesome gift. I can hardly wait to start forgetting little parts of the series, so I can read the whole thing over again.