I was going to write some lighthearted fluff today but like the old saying goes, life is what happens during the making of plans.  In this uber-connected information age, different kinds of relationships that never would have been possible 20 years ago are now just another normal aspect of life.  I’m sure all of us have people that we’ve Instant Messaged or emailed whom we’ve never seen before.  Certain people who read this blog who I “know” quite well due to years of emailing and/or instant messaging I’ve never met in person.

I don’t discount these relationships as lesser ones, and while I might not have bonded with them like I did with people I went to school with, the fact remains that we all know quite a bit about each other and our tendencies and likes/dislikes.  Heck, this blog is a portal into a portion of my mind that many of you never knew existed.  While there are large portions of my life that I will never make public, people from Florida to California to Washington to New England know a heckuva lot more about me than they ever would have just a few decades ago.

There is an email string I’m part of that includes friends of one of my friend’s former coworker, so this is three degrees of separation.  Yet we all get emails on our birthday, life events and other assorted things from this email circle.  Some of us play in fantasy sports each year too.  What I’m trying to say is that even though we’ve never met each other physically, there is a bond there that eventually gets beyond a simple technology link.

A majority of this particular group is about 12-15 years older than me and a lot of them grew up together in Ohio.  One of the guys in this circle of friends went in for surgery this week for a hernia and also to have his gallbladder removed.  Details aren’t forthcoming yet but he died from complications to that surgery yesterday.  I only knew him from this email chain yet it still hit me in the gut when I got the news.  To make it hit even closer to home, there was a heartbreaking photo of him and his daughter (I’m guessing she’s close to being a teen). 

We all know life isn’t fair but it doesn’t make news like this any easier.  I think I maybe got “lucky” losing my dad in Vietnam so I wouldn’t have to go through the pain of losing him when I knew him for a long time.  While it’s preferable to have the parent die before the child, it still must hurt like hell to have a sudden death like that when it’s not expected.  With a known terminal illness, you have time to make your peace and sometimes the death is a merciful escape.

I’d much rather hit the Delete button in my email Contacts list based on not having communicated with that person in a long time or some other reason other than the person actually having died.  I feel ill knowing that any day something awful could happen and Megan could become a widow in an instant and Ally and my soon-to-be-second daughter could be fatherless.

Dave Lewber, I never met you physically, but I wish the best for your family.  See you in the afterlife, wherever that may be.