This week, a very old and dear friend of mine lost his brilliant wife to breast cancer.
Steve Hylton and I have been friends since I worked at Suncoast Motion Picture Company. Like so many of my friends, he started off as a customer, a regular, someone who you looked forward to seeing because you knew they’d stay and shoot the breeze with you a while and help time pass. Steve is a fellow geek (and he knows we relish the label). STAR WARS will always be his lifeblood, but as with so many of us, his spheres of influence converge across the spectrum of sci-fi, including Doctor Who.
Steve is a good friend, someone to chat with about everything and nothing, about the importance of things going on in the world, about new movie trailers and about nothing at all. Steve might just be the best kind of friend, because he wasn’t afraid to call me out over some bullshit. He was truthful when he said that I was not an easy person to be friends with, because I expect everyone else to do the work. And he was right. I am the worst kind of friend, and I respect him all the more for being able to say it to me. I like to think I try harder, that I got better, but I’m not sure I have.
Steve met Shari, and found a quiet soul who mirrored his own. They were married in 2006, and have a lovely daughter, Laniey. Shari was an amazing woman, a good wife and mother, a true friend, and she was one of us. She was a geek. She was so like Steve in so many ways, and I regret not getting to know her better. I am reminded of how short and precious and fragile our lives are. Her loss diminishes us all.
“We will sing to you, Doctor. The universe will sing you to your sleep. This song is ending. But the story never ends.” – Sigma Ood, “The End Of Time, Part 2”
