The rest of Bill Schmalfeldt’s life starts tomorrow

We were pleased to see this on Bill Schmalfeldt’s Twitter feed this evening.

We are very interested in what he will decide to do with it.  To help with the possibility that there might be a true fresh start, we’ve changed the usual default Billy Sez image to a more recent one of Bill.  We’ll leave it that way for a bit and see how things go.

We believe that Bill is feeling many emotions right now following his wife’s death.  Anger, sadness, fear, loneliness, hopelessness- a grief counselor will tell you that these are all usually present after the passing of a loved one.  Depression is common too.  We are guessing that Bill will struggle with some or all of these things as he moves on.  We suspect he will go through a period of writing and perhaps saying things that will strike many as the same old-same old.  He will probably lash out with even greater violence at his usual targets, or even new ones.  He may even reach new heights of being hateful and bizarre over the next few days.  We hope he won’t, but this is real life we’re dealing with.

So we are going to take a break here.  This is not a truce.  Pretty much nothing Bill can write, say or do will end it.  In five days we’ll come back and see where things stand.  We’ll check in and take things day by day from there.  We are hoping that Bill will seek professional help with the grieving process (not a sign of weakness btw, but of self-insight), and we are will to help by doing the things we’ve described as well.

We’ll leave this thread open for comments, but we hope that they are forward looking in tone, and not simply reactive to Bill Schmalfeldt while he goes through a difficult period in his life.  Our friend and commenter “Sam” put things in clear perspective on the Gail Schmalfeldt is dead thread when he wrote:

This all seems so sad. I know, I know, give it a few days and he’ll go right on saying the things that make you throw up your hands and wish him ill but right now I genuinely feel sorry for the guy. Grief should be shared with friends and family, not adversaries. Unless that’s all you have.

We think that Bill has an opportunity at what we know is a sad time for him.  Let’s give him a reasonable chance to take advantage of it.  We are not his friends, but we share with him a common basic humanity.