When Yahoo! decided to shut down this branch of their business, dozens of active writers held onto the ties we'd made and encouraged each other as we built blogs, like the one you are reading and like Melissa's blog, "Wading through Motherhood."Each of us followed our individual interests, and though our blogs were diverse, we continued to stay in touch, reading the work produced by the friends we'd made in our months or years writing together.
Then, one morning, messages on Facebook, tagged with Melissa's name, gave the indication something was terribly wrong. Looking a little deeper, it was clear. My friend had died, suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind her husband, her two small children, her parents, and many, many other family and friends who loved her dearly.
I didn't know any of them. I'd read about Melissa's family in her own words, and I knew how much she adored her husband and her children. She loved being a mother more than anything. But even though I had shared many chats and messages with her, I'd never written a word to her husband or anyone else she knew in person. I had to reach out to a stranger, a friend of hers who had posted a sorrowful goodbye and seemed to have known her for many years, to even find out how she died.
And I cried. And the other writers who knew Melissa cried. We mourned, and we felt helpless and sad, whether we lived nearby or half a world away. We'd known her, we'd loved her for her sweet and generous heart, and now we'd lost her.
