I haven't felt like posting here since yesterday afternoon because…well, it may sound silly but I didn't want to bump the Steve Gerber obit out of the featured slot on my "current" page. A phrase I'm hearing a lot from his friends is "I knew this was coming but I didn't think it would hit me so hard." I know how they feel. People ask me why I write so many obituaries and there are really two reasons. One is that with some of these people, if I don't, no one will. The other reason is that it's busy work. Someone calls and says, "A friend of yours just died," and it gives you something to do that's not unrelated and at least feels a little constructive.
As I think I said somewhere else on this site, I think grief is often a very overrated emotion, one we too often fall into because we think it's expected of us. I once attended (spoke at, even) a funeral where the widow seemed to think that she had to keep showing us her pain in order to show us how much she loved him. She also seemed to feel she had to get physically ill and to bring her own life to a screeching halt. When we got to the burial portion of the ceremony, you half-expected her to vault into the pit with the departed and ask the men with the shovels to cover them both over.
But a little grief, a little remembrance…that's okay. We need that.
There are hundreds of tributes to Steve all over the Internet, which is great, just great. Steve loved the Internet. He was one of the first people I knew to embrace it and realize what it could be. Back in the days of the 1200 Baud Hayes Smartmodem, Steve taught me the joys of a service called MCI Mail, which was not unlike the kind of e-mail that Barney Rubble would have used to send something to Fred Flintstone. I remember sitting with him in an office at DC Comics…I was there to support Steve (not that he needed me) in his explanation that some day soon, we'd be delivering most of our scripts via electronic transfer, and that artwork would go by this new thing called "Federal Express" until such time as the technology had advanced to the point where art could be sent via wires, as well. He was explaining this to one of the company's executives and the person looked at him like he was predicting a Martian invasion.
So I love it that everyone's celebrating Gerber on the web. A lot of it's over on his weblog, which I have hijacked and which we're putting to good use as a central clearing house for Gerber remembrances.
As I say over there, no word yet on any formal memorial services or anything. Actually, I think we're having a very fitting memorial service on the World Wide Web. I could tell you how important Steve and his work were to so many people but nothing drives home that point better than all those messages on discussion boards and all those postings on weblogs.
I don't know what my next post here will be about but it won't be about Steve. It's time.