Blogs forgotten. Absent friends.

Say a word for them.

Slices  from people's lives. Some profound, some inane. Some hyper-focused on a topic, as if they read somewhere about "building a brand to build your audience," and "how to stick to one topic so you can stay on brand." And other helpful hints involving the word "brand." Others just plain disjointed diaries.

High school, college age, middle-aged. There's no specific theme to them, except perhaps the one that comes with a Blogger template. Or Live Journal, remember that?

Most of these (at least the ones I encounter the most often when I'm digging into the recesses of the internet)  are cooking or music blogs. They start off with promise and are very prolific. Enthusiastic record reviews. Intricate recipes for muffins. Over time, the posts grow more sporadic. A few weeks or even months. Followed by another post (usually the final one, although not always)  starting off with an apology. "Things have been hectic," "I just moved," etc.  As if they owe the world or total strangers or even friends an explanation. Eventually, they stop all together but the blog lives on.

Sometimes it comes without warning. As if they made some decision but didn't share with the larger world. It's only because I'm in this mood that I'm putting way too much weight on silence. Deciding to stop writing a blog? It's the same as deciding not to finish a book or a show on Netflix. No ulterior motive or deeper meaning. You just lost interest. It's too much work. You'll pick it up again some day. And even if I don't know these people, it's like I was given a window, a glimpse into another person's world. Even if I don't know them, I can't help but idly wonder where it went.

When I was 20, I had a pen pal with a unique name.  She'd send letters wrapped like presents, using glitter pens to write my address over the wrapping paper. A few times, it seemed like she sent nothing. It was only after trial and error did I realize she'd written the letter on the insie of wrapping paper, like a prisoner making the most of a few supplies.

She lived somewhere in the west. She seemed to have an understanding of life that most eighteen or nineteen-year olds don't. There was something old soul about her; I suspected she'd been through some rough patches, although I couldn't say for sure because I never asked. The letters were creative but as distant as our locations. As if we made an unspoken choice to leave out personal details.

I don't remember the substance of the letters; it's too long ago now. But at the time it didn't seem strange. Maybe it was due to growing up in small towns. Even in different parts of the country, small towns are all the same. You get bored. Your salvation from boredom is driving to the next small town, or the next small town after that, or taking a train or a bus to a bigger city for the weekend. Looking back, it seems we made a connection because we'd had enough of mundane, and wanted interesting news from somewhere else.

Just like blogs, the letters started to trickle and then stopped. There was no real reason, at least none communicated. No dust up or argument or unrequited love or any of it. She was just a character who appeared on paper and then disappeared. In real life it was more likely another matter.

Life went on, I moved away and years went by. A few years after the advent of Facebook, when social media was still fun, something made me think of her. I remember I was living in Montreal at the time, and one night decided to look her up.

I didn't do so out of a particular desire to pick up where we'd left it,  or even make contact, but more to prove whether it had been real. This was years after the fact, perhaps a decade or more. When her name popped in my head that night, I wondered if it had all an act. Perhaps it was a creative project for school and they used an alias. It's not like I would have blamed her if that had been the case. On the contrary. It would have been that much cooler. As if I were an unknowing participant in someone else's performance art.

The only starting point was her name. So I entered it, expecting to find nothing. What I found was an answer. The first result that was returned wasn't a person, but a small members-only group dedicated to her memory.

She'd died aged 30, a few years after I looked up her name. Her obituary said she'd been married and divorced. No kids. Survived by two sisters. She'd been a Jehovah's Witness. The obituary description on the page also told me she was kind and creative, which I already knew, and had gone to cosmetology school, (or "beauty school," like we used to say) which I didn't.

There was no reason given for death and I didn’t want to ask. I didn't join the group, either. What would I have said? Here's to the memory of someone I didn't know except on one specific level, who wrote a few times for a short period and then randomly stopped?

It would have felt as weird as celebrating a short story, for short stories often do the same thing. They enter your life with a good character or cast of characters, stay for a while, and then before you know it, you read the last sentence. At least the good stories do. the ones where you give up halfway through because you lost interest is something else entirely.