Great writing on life and death - by Justin Heckert, Chaz Ebert & Chris Jones

Throughout the process of writing this blog, I've tried to make connections between great writing come across and three recent excellent pieces are around different time periods related to death.

A feature story that focused on the time just prior to someone passing was "Susan Cox Is No Longer Here" by Justin Heckert for the Dec issues of Indianapolis Monthly. It's a fascinating piece that begins with details on someone dying and a wonderful hospital program that provides companionship for those who need it. The story then takes a sharp turn into events that makes one think about tidy narratives, what we expect to happen with things and what actually can occur instead. Heckert writes something that doesn't lend itself to a simple take-away for the reader, but that seems to be what makes it such a great and though-provoking story.

The second piece to note here was "Oral histories of 2013: Roger Ebert's wife, Chaz, on his final moments" that was "as told to Chris Jones" for Esquire. It's a short missive from Chaz Ebert and very heartfelt.

The last piece of great writing to note here was by Jones and about work that gets done after cataclysmic events of death and devastation. "Kenneth Feinberg: The Nation's Leading Expert in Picking Up the Pieces" was for the Jan issue of Esquire on the lawyer who handled disbursement of funds to 9/11 victims and since then has continued to administer money to victims after major disasters. It's a fascinating topic and Jones writes a very well-done look at someone who seems to be doing the best they possibly can in the face of difficult circumstances.

Writing on & by Roger Ebert

Such a shame, the passing of Roger Ebert a few days ago. There's been a number of great remembrances written (and I'm sure still to be written) and below are the ones that touched me the most... along with some of the great Ebert writing I've come across in the past.

It's certainly not an end-all, be-all list, but the remembrance pieces I've found particularly noteworthy (all fairly short and with some including links to longer past writing about Ebert) have been the following: "Will Leitch on Ebert" by Marcus Gilmer (and Leitch) for the Chicago Sun-Times, "I'll Let Roger Do the Talking" by Chris Jones for Esquire, "Million Dollar Movie" by Peter Richmond for Alex Belth's Bronx Banter, "Roger Ebert Hails Human Existence As 'A Triumph'" for The Onion and finally "A statement from Chaz Ebert" on the passing of her husband.

The pieces by Ebert himself that I've been struck by in the past (and linked to and ruminated on in blog posts) included his memoir Life Itself and four different blog posts he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times: "All the Lonely People" on... that, "The Storyteller and the Stallion" on Bill Nack, "Video games 13,823, Huck Finn 8,088" on Huck Finn vs. video games and finally "How do they get to be that way?" on racists and racism.

Just a solid legacy of great writing about and by Ebert.