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Is this my memorial?


I'm not being morbid here...or am I? Morbid curiosity? But what happens to those blogs of people who've passed away?

It's something I've wondered about for a while...but not too deeply. However, recently it came to the fore when I heard about an old colleague.

The reason I remembered her so well was that I was about to leave my son for a few days and was waving him off outside our offices.  I was upset and a few tears were running down my cheeks. She was waiting for her husband to collect her.

"Don't cry" she called over "you'll start me off...and I'm going to see my boy!" I laughed tearfully, pushed the lump in my throat back down to my chest where it sat like painful knot and went on my way.

I'd heard about her in the following years, after she'd left the company we boy worked for. Her son had beome incredibly ill and after a couple of years past away at the age of 14.  She had her love and religion to help her through her grief and I had no doubt she suffered. I'd met her husband several times and expressed my sadness for what they were going through.

However, when I found out she'd died in an accident I was surprised at how it affected me. I hadn't seen her for many years. I hadn't thought about her, except when I met her husband. Maybe it was her loss, her sadness and grief in the intervening years that got to me? How would I have coped in her same situation?  Someone told me she'd written a book about her experience. I looked it up. I searched for her name on the internet and came across a blog she'd written. It wasn't a huge one. It was her own thoughts, beautifully penned, charting her last few years. It made me sad to think that it's all that's left of her thoughts, but even more, that she'd left a tribute to her life that someone will read for a while. It will be a connection for her husband, to read her thoughts in that short blog.

What will happen to it now that she's no longer here? Will it become obsolete once it's clear that it hasn't been updated for a while? Are our blogs just temporary tombstones that will be wiped away once we've outgrown our words or our usefulness, or when we realise that our lives are more of a priority than sitting down and writing our blogs?

I've often read blogs that haven't been updated for a while. Where are those bloggers now? Did they get bored and drift away? There's rarely any conclusion...a final goodbye, or a 'Taraa for now'. Just a blank ending which makes me wonder what happened to their lives.

I'd hate to think that my scribblings will be lost in the ether one day.  I haven't saved anything I've written to hard copy so very few who know me will see how brilliant I am at entertaining the masses...or maybe that's a good thing.

It just got me wondering. Are these our memorials?










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