Up until the other day, I thought the word was Godsmacked. I really did. What do I know about British slang? Turns out it’s GOBsmacked. Gob meaning mouth, or to be so stunned it’s as if you’ve been slapped in the mouth. Frankly, I like my version better. Godsmacked, or to feel as though you’ve been slapped by the big guy. It’s a bigger word, useful when simply “surprised” or “stupefied” won’t do or perhaps aren’t quite subtle enough. You could be Godsmacked when you’d lost your job. Or equally Godsmacked when you found out it’s okay to say “no” once in awhile. Anything that flings you around and makes you look in another direction.

Barbara Seranella, grand dame of L.A. mystery writers, died on Sunday.

I didn’t know her personally, had only seen her speak once. By the time I moved to Los Angeles and got my feet under me, she was already sick. I’ve lost track of the number of times she was to appear at some writing event or another and then wasn’t well enough to attend. She was starting to feel like the literary equivalent of Mr. Snuffleupagus, Big Bird’s giant friend who only appears when everyone else is gone. Somehow I really thought, just like on Sesame Street, a day would come when Elmo would hold on to her snuffle so she couldn’t run away and I, like the adults on the show, could run out from my hiding place and meet her.

Turns out her snuffle was broken. Her liver, too. She’d had two transplants that didn’t work and couldn’t hang on long enough for a third, which was sad to me. But I have to admit, it was sad in a sort of non-personal way, like when Peter Jennings died or Princess Diana or Lassie.

Then I read this, and I got a little sadder than that: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion
/sunday/commentary/la-op-seranella31dec31,0,7861261.
story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

It’s an article she wrote for the L.A. Times about being sick and getting better and all the things she was going to do in 2007. She’d never seen the Disney Concert Hall – a new L.A. landmark – in person. She was going to do that. The Watts Tower, too. I have a list like that. I have a list like that even though I had a climbing accident in Yosemite last year that I didn’t blog about, but that was uncomfortably close to being what we’ll call “very serious.” I have a list like that even though I had three close calls with cars while running last year. I have a list like that even though I regularly drive on the 405 and consider expiration dates on food to be more like a suggestion.

Godsmacked.

This weekend I’m going to the Getty Villa and marking that, at least, off my list.