The popular networking sites are, IMO, good for mostly 2 things, and not much else: 1) Staying connected with family and friends, and 2) reconnecting with people from your past using the various search features.
Regarding 2, I've reconnected with people who I haven't seen since 1st grade. But today, I must report that it's not always a joy to find them. To recap, I had a friend with whom I attended high school, "Ted", who had a sister, "Deb", who also attended, but was a grade beneath us. While she and I weren't close friends, we were acquainted enough that we'd say "hi" in passing, which thrilled me, because, to say this young woman was stunning would be to seriously understate it.
Well, the other day I got a hankering to look her up. I first sought out her brother, and while the only matching name wasn't him, it did turn out that it was his son by the same name..i.e.. "Ted [.......] III". So, I'm browsing his photos in the hopes of seeing a pic of his father, "Ted", or his father's sister, "Deb", and I notice a photo of a grave plate with flowers on it. Before clicking it, my heart sank. My intuition in those precise seconds told me it was "Deb", and I was right. I clicked the photo, and what expanded before my eyes was a grave plate with her given name, middle name, and married name. The year of birth, "1963", confirmed it, and I could no longer refuse to believe it despite trying.
After minimal effort exploring the net, it turns out that she was a fire-fighter and paramedic here in the same town where we attended the same high school. She left behind two sons, a brother, and mother and father. The cause of death was breast cancer, which, according to sources, she had defeated the first two times, but her third bout with it was one she could not overcome. It....i.e.. that despicable disease called "cancer", defeated her. There is an eerie sadness remembering her, being young, alive and well, traversing the school halls, and yet, now, gone. A life cut short at 48 years old.
2 comments:
Sad to be sure ... but it sounds like she lived ... really lived. It makes an argument to leave nothing unsaid or unresolved... because tomorrow may never come.
My condolences friend.
"It makes an argument to leave nothing unsaid or unresolved... because tomorrow may never come." ~ R. Hall
True. Thx for that. I'd only add that sometimes there are hardships in life that will never be resolved. Yes, we can do our damnedest to resolve them, if nothing else, for ourselves. But unfortunately, sometimes there's no resolution.
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