I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep at night, and so one of the rituals I've established is to surf blogs on my Palm Lifedrive until I'm sleepy enough to let go. The last few weeks have been quite tiring, so I haven't been keeping up with "my usuals" for nearly a month.
One of my favourites is a blog by Daisy Lupin called "Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden". The blog is about Daisy's life, family, poetry and art, with some Celtic mythology thrown in. It's like sitting down at a kitchen table and just talking with a treasured, lifelong friend, and reading it always calms me down and sends me smiling off to dreamland.
Until last night.
Sometimes with blogs, I'll deliberately not check in on them that often so that I'll have even more bloggy goodness to enjoy when I decide to catch up. I hadn't been to Daisy's blog in nearly a month when I checked in last night, only to discover that she had suddenly and inexplicably passed away from some sort of illness.
The odd thing about blogs is that you interact with them in the same way you do a book -- your glance passes over the words -- but that you are given the story a chapter at a time. You expect that the "book" will continue. You don't expect it to just ... end. And that was one of the things I was mulling over last night before going to sleep.
What I love most about blogging is that anyone with a computer can do it. You can have your voice, your thoughts, out there without having to pass an editor's desk, or to have been deemed "worthy" by a publishing house. If you have a computer, your voice can be heard. The simple glimpses we are given into blogger's lives tell so much about the person writing that we often feel that we know them. I never met Daisy Lupin, and, given that she lived in England, I likely never would have. But because of her blog, I feel I got to know her at least a little bit, and her thoughts and voice have become a part of my life experience, and therefore who I am.
Strictly Confidential is probably a far better epitaph than I could possibly write.
I am sad that Daisy has passed, but I am grateful that I was able to see glimpses into her life. And I am glad that her daughter Lydia has left Daisy's blog up so that people can see what she has left behind.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
What we leave behind.
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2 comments:
While I've never known any bloggers that have passed away, I have been around when other people are writing about how much they miss someone who has just passed on, and I always feel compelled, out of respect, to go and look at their blogs. It always gives me a strange feeling to look at their words and think, "This is what they left behind. This is their record; the words, even from months ago, are still as fresh as if they had just been written, and yet not another word will ever be written here." It makes me feel sad on a level I really can't explain properly. It's one thing to, say, find out about the death of an author you like. You only see glimpses of them in their works, sometimes years apart. But bloggers, you get that glimpse into their daily lives, and it's easy to know them on a personal level, and so the loss hits much closer to home when they aren't there anymore.
thanks for sharing this bloglink...it's important for writers words to live on. My sympathies to her friends and family.
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