Speaker for the Dead

Not my usual kind of title, I know, but it's not my usual kind of post.  It's not about me, very little is about me.  The world is so much bigger than stupid me and my stupid problems.  It contains a lot of other sad, struggling people, and a lot who are past the point of struggle.  I want to talk about them.

No, they weren't my friends.  I never knew them, and I never will.  They died before I even began to learn of their lives.  But they left something behind for me to find.  These blogs are lives caught up in static words, like windows or like chunks of amber with perfect fossils hidden inside.  People, human beings have walked through this world and tried to reach out to others with their words, their thoughts spelled out in letters.  Even when they are gone, these blogs remain as proof and as remembrance, like a eulogy they wrote themselves.  Like markers on gravestones.

I don't want to list names, because there are so many I will leave out, but I want to honor everyone who's passed away.  I have been able to learn so much from them, even though they couldn't know that their words would aid some stupid kid crouched in a corner years later.  I have considered them friends even as I read and watch the static archive grow ever closer to the end of posts, and know what is coming.  Still it is hard not to believe that they are still alive when they seem so bright and lively, the words unchanged since their deaths. 

Every blog is doomed to end the same way, even if it is abandoned that is a kind of death for everyone who only knows that person's life through their words.  My blog will end that way too, but sooner I feel and with much less sorrow for I am not as important as these others.  These were the strongest, they fought hard and innovated, researched and supported each other, and even still they passed on.  There is little hope for those of us weaker than them.

Death is the end of every life, and life is just the beginning of a new death.

But I'm glad to have been able to know these wonderful people, even if only in the barest way possible.  I would have liked to talk with them, to tell them how much they inspire me, to hear their troubles and maybe find a way to help, but it is too late for that.  When they died, I did not know to cry for them.  But I will cry for them now.

For those who have died and for those who have yet to die, I will cry.

None of us deserved this fate.