Comings and Goings.
When I was in high school I experienced an impactful loss of “someone I didn’t really know”.
There was a player in an online game I played that went by the handle Blythe; a person I looked up to as a level-headed role model. He was older than me, married with a couple of kids, and that’s probably about all I remember of him. He was probably not far from the age I am right now, writing this.
I think I did a stick figure drawing of his character that I would like to include in this blog post but I can’t find it right now.
Along with Blythe, I was a chat moderator, which put us in some shared circles. Still, I wasn’t close to him.
It was nevertheless earth shattering when I learned that he passed suddenly from an aneurysm.
I wrote a letter to him, “Dear Blythe” to process his loss. And in the years following, every now and then I would write another “Dear Blythe” as a diary entry of sort. Life updates or things that I needed to angst over. They went into the same notebook.
I often think about Blythe, in the same way that one thinks about faraway internet “friends” that one has fallen out of touch with. It’s just that in this instance, I know why we fell out of touch.
I actually wrote my most recent “Dear Blythe” a couple of months ago. It might have been ten years between that and the prior entry. It was a happy one, as I feel like I’m in a most incredible stage of life right now and it felt right to “let him know” after angsting to him in the past! I suspect I will write again to him in the future, but my most recent letter felt like the end of a long chapter.
About three months ago we received our first visit from a cat that we have come to call “The Stranger”. I was in Melbourne at the time but received word from John that our indoor cat had observed and interacted with the Stranger in the window. I got to meet it perhaps a week later, and one day when I was working from home it hung around for quite some time, eventually deciding to use an awkward box of painting supplies to sit in.
We allocated it a cat bed instead; we welcomed its intermittent visits and the unpredictability of our relationship perhaps makes it even more endearing.
We don’t know if it’s a stray or if it’s someone else’s cat. A week or two ago we spotted it trotting around with some neighbours, and asked them if it was theirs. “No, it just sleeps in our garden in the afternoon”.
Perhaps soon we will try tying a message to its neck or bundling it off to the vet to check for a microchip (I didn’t notice any microchip tattoos). For now though, it continues to pop by and use the bed at our front door overnight, sometimes making a point to say hi and sometimes just appearing and disappearing, the only trace being an indent left in the cushion.
When it doesn’t come for a couple days, our indoor cat starts getting whiny at the window for it, and so do I. “I wonder when the stranger will visit,” we say.
Last night I said to John, “One day, the Stranger will stop coming and we won’t know why”. The idea made me a little sad, but only a little bit. I told myself that I could handle the comings and goings of life with with acceptance and grace.
This morning I learned of the passing of Belghast, prolific blogger and founder of the Blaugust blogging festival. I first crossed paths with Belghast many years back because he picked the same name for his Blog-fest as we had, around the same time. I believe we first met on Twitter; hashtags and micro-communities linking up in their own ways.
Belghast was another person that I did not interact with much and didn’t know well, but who I saw as a role model and stand-up human being. I had learned of his significant life updates in the past few years, including his cancer diagnosis, but it was still a shock to find out that he’s no longer with us.
I think I will think about Bel often now too – another internet figure that I’ve fallen out of touch with. I am thankful to have closure and to know where his story ended, and I know he will leave behind a tremendous legacy. Still, I have shed many tears through this post – I am as gutted now thinking of Bel as I was for Blythe; all of their warmth and potential cut short.
I didn’t know how to process this news but a blog post seemed most appropriate. Rest well, Bel.