I don’t know why, but I just started re-reading The Other Side of the Forest, and I’m not even sure how many times this makes. That of course led me to reading The Lost Queen again, which led me to reading essentially all of her work again. I lost track of how many times I have read her work a long time ago.

I have also lost track of how many times I have posted a comment regarding her work, hoping against hope, that somehow she is still out there and will see my comments and decide to respond. I know that this is wishful thinking, and I know that I am not the only one who has done so. As she was posting both The Lost Queen and Freyja’s Daughters during the onset of Covid-19, and her comments related how she was still having to travel on business all during that time, I fear that she succumbed to Covid. One day she was telling us how busy she was with her job, how she was going to spend a few days at the beach, and then she was just gone.

I was in much the same position as she was, as my job required that I travel weekly, but unlike her, operations at my employer were mandatorily shut down under order of the various state governments we interacted with. Due to this, our retail operations, distribution centers, and all corporate offices (including mine) were shut down. We received essentially six hours notice of the shutdown, which gave me barely enough time to notify all my employees, send out a mass e-mail to multiple vendors and associates, gather whatever materials I felt might be needed, stuff boxes of files and manuals into my car, grab my laptop, escort everyone out of the building, watch security lock everything up, and then drive 280 miles north to my house. I was one of five people who were still working remotely while every other employee in the company was temporarily furloughed.

I drove home, unloaded everything from the car into my home office, and the next morning found out that my spouse (who was the Commissioner of Accounts for the city in which I live, and was still working as an essential government employee) was exposed to Covid when someone decided to come into her office for an hour while sick. Everyone in her office was sent home, and they (and everyone they had come in contact with) were quarantined by order of the New York State Department of Health. So we spent six weeks locked into our own house - me, my spouse, and two of our sons who were still living with us at that time. My spouse and my sons all become very ill with Covid, while I never got sick. I spent weeks taking care of the three of them, cooking, cleaning, doing everything. Luckily, my middle son who lives a few blocks away from us was not exposed and was able to do whatever shopping I needed, leaving everything on our doorstep for me to bring inside. During all of this, we were receiving multiple phone calls each day from the County Health Department, at random times during the day, and each person would have to get on the phone and provide their temperature. I was having to go around the house, take their temps, and have them each get on the phone and tell the nurse on the other end what their temperature was. We had to go two full weeks without anyone running a fever before they would allow us out of the house.

Anyway, we were lucky enough to all be exposed to Covid and come out the other end OK.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the same is true of Elsbeth. Why is it that someone with so much talent, someone of so much worth, someone that so many of us cherished, disappeared? Why do good people die, while those who deserve less continue to prosper?

Elsbeth, wherever you are, I miss your talent. You have left a hole that will never be filled.