Rest In Peace

Last week was an odd one for me. I had a lot of personal things going on, including a huge concern over my youngest, EPT and his upcoming appointment at Children's Hospital. The day I was scheduled to leave, there was a twitter on Twitter. Gideony had died.

I'm still in this weird, unexplainable reflective space over his death. It turns out he commited suicide. Those of us who "knew" him online were shocked. He and I followed each other on Twitter and had made many funny connections. It's odd now to describe him this way, but he was like a breath of fresh air in many ways. He had a good mix of sarcasm, humor and positive insight that made me reflect further on things.

But unfortunately, being friends with someone on a virtual community does not help you fully feel their pain. That wasn't any more clear to me than it was last week. He had died December 11 and the word did not hit Twitter until December 16th, after his funeral had already happened. Many of us, although across the country, would have found a way to get to his funeral and show our support for his life and work.

It is difficult on Twitter, where you have only 140 characters, to express how you feel about someone, how much you care for them, what you'd be willing to do for them if you knew they were in dispair. And those who are in dispair just don't have enough characters to express the sorrow in their hearts. This proves to me that those who I have connected with in the online environment need to be met personally. They need to be touched and held. After all these years of human existence, it goes back to basic human contact where we are best able to show our affection and concern.