She deserved more

This afternoon, I was chatting with Ed when I teasingly asked him if he had updated his “silly” column. He laughed, said that he had and forwarded me the link. My jaw dropped wide open when I read his elegy to a friend, a dear friend who had her life stolen from her by a rare disease, a friend who had meant so much to him that a picture of them monkeying around was pinned to the wall of his cubicle at work.

He was the first person I had known who knew her as who she was offline, and not through her online persona. And as I read his eulogy, I couldn’t help but compare it with the storm that is happening here and here.

While these people were quarreling over tributes and such, he said, her friends were grieving for her. The column, chockful of memories and emotions, was his way of mourning the loss of his friend.

I agree with the boyfriend in that yes, preserving the blog and the site is a wonderful idea. Let her legacy live on. Let people who miss her have a place to go to, to remember her as how she was. But no, don’t open this to the entire blogosphere, don’t turn this into a circus where people tell people that they suck and to f-off. Let her friends, those who knew her and loved her and respected her be part of it.

As for the book, the Internet is public and open domain. Let her family members decide when and where they want to go through her entries and read about a side of her they were not quite familiar with, if they should want to. Let them decide when they want to make their peace, and not because someone is shoving a book in their faces.

Good intentions, poor execution.

As Ed says in his column, she deserved more.
Shame on all those who participated in the name-calling and mudslinging.