So it goes

Kurt Vonnegut is in heaven now.

I know he died as a result of head injuries, but I have to wonder...did he fall out of a tree?

Somebody tell me he fell out of a tree.

How many educations and confirmations did I get from the writings of Kurt Vonnegut? I really can't say. My education on the Dresden fire bombing....that was Kurt's. My introduction to humanism and a further confirmation of the simple, essential wrongness of war and so much more.

I've read criticisms of Mr. Vonnegut's writings calling them simplistic, confusing, even worthless. How is it then, that 20 years after I've read Slaughterhouse Five that I can recall a simple detail and attribute it to that book and go search out that book to get a little illumination on that subject? Hell, I'm surprised I remember anything for that long, let alone a bit from a book.

For about 20 years he's been helping me get through this thing, whatever it is, and for that, too, I am grateful.

They've wormed their way into my psyche and being. They're a part of me. And that part of me is possibly never mature. Thank you Mr. Vonnegut for these gifts. I'll get to grow that part of me the rest of my life. Perhaps it is human suffering and the simple, bright light he used to illuminate it that reached inside me and grabbed my soul by the shirt collar.

I have to wonder, too, if up in Heaven, he's saying "If this isn't good, what is?" I'll have to ask him when I get there.