The Mirror and the local sports community mourned one of its pillars in the wake of former sports editor Jim Lane’s passing Monday at age 85 (see obituary here).

Jim was long retired by the time I joined the sports desk as a part-timer nearly 10 years ago, but he was still a regular in the newsroom. I always appreciated our time together when we’d get to talk about sports, the times he helped me work on stories when I was still green and figuring out how I fit in a space that, at the time, was entirely foreign to me.

He was a wealth of knowledge and a grandfather-like presence at a time when our business was in a constant state of evolution and change. But Jim never changed, and for that we all fondly remember him.

Shortly before I learned about Jim’s passing, I was re-watching “Red vs. Blue: Restoration” and a line from the character Caboose stuck with me as I thought about it afterward.

“That’s the thing about a memory. You don’t get to own it. It lives on, even after you die, it goes from person to person, and they can tell it to each other throughout all of time. And they can laugh, or they can cry, or they can do both. Because people may come and go, but memories are what we leave. And the best memories never die, because they can’t.”

It’s helped a lot to process the grief I’ve felt not just with Mr. Lane’s passing, but with the losses I’ve dealt with over the course of the past several years.

Watching both of my grandparents suffer slowly due to medical issues modern medicine hasn’t entirely figured out yet was hard to do, but my family have come to accept that they both lived full lives into old age and that they were together again. After their cremations, we had pendants made, so we can always keep a small part of them with us.

I also lost a childhood friend to suicide and a former co-worker who had cancer that came back in the past year. It was easily one of the hardest years of my life, because I never expected to have to say goodbye to two people who were such a big part of my life so soon.

But if you’re familiar with the five stages of grief (which I believe is perfectly exemplified by the “Robot Chicken” clip of the giraffe stuck in quick sand), the final stage is acceptance, and I’ve come to accept that there are times like this that happen. It’s a part of life.

But saying goodbye is never so easy. So, at least for now, I’ll just say see you later.

Digital content coordinator

and copy editor Dan Isenberg

can be reached at disenberg@altoonamirror.com or on X @TheseDanTweets.