- When my childhood friend (the actor) died? I bought season tickets to the Met. I like performances (theatre, ballet, opera) but that’s like, a once a year thing. Maybe. Not a weekly or even monthly thing. Except that year. And I had a blast, in ball gowns & long gloves, remembering how my friend and I used to sneak in during dress rehearsals, in ripped up jeans and flannel shirts and doc martins. It was just a very cool way to say goodbye, and thankyou.
When my favorite uncle (astrophysisit & backcountry sports/exploration) was killed in an avalanche?
- Water sports chick (me) bought season tickets & snowboard lessons (and fell in love, bought season tickets every year after, just waiting-waiting-waiting for the snow to fall).
- Signed up for a series of astronomy classes at the U (the kids classes my son took were wicked fun, the actual adult course had me wanting to jab a pencil through my eye).
- Took my (mostly made up of fibreglass patches & duct tape) kayak on a shatter-or-bust mission. It was my first kayak ever, a hand me down from my uncle when I was a teenager, and it steered like a sinking barge with a benzo problem. So it had just been collecting dust for ages. Which is the opposite of how my uncle lived, or would have wanted his things treated. Use it, or lose it. It took me about 6mo of creative misuse (I can toooootally fit down that drainage pipe!) to finally break it beyond repair. (And apx 3 more meters of fibreglass patching; no cheating, if I can fix it? It’s not dead, yet.). Then I donated it to a local REEF project, where it’s now collecting barnacles and baby octopodus, and other cool things, along with other busted up sea craft & historic building rubble.
- Meanwhile a casual friend/colleague, instead of spending a season or a year, it would probably just be a weekend or day trip or event.