We are all closer

I remember my mother looking through the obituaries in the newspaper. I remember my father doing things like that as well, although I suspect he was always hoping to find someone he knew there so he could go to the wake and act like a good friend. The sadness of someone passing was always quite personal. My classmate’s dad died of cancer when we were both quite young. I had a schoolmate die of encephalitis when we were 16.

I was sad, people I knew had lost someone important to them. I went to the wakes, I went to the funerals. It was something quite… connected (I’m not sure what the right phrase would be here).

The Internet’s made things so different. We are struck by the deaths of people we’ve never met. I feel sad and sorry for more people I don’t know who have lost someone they loved. I feel it is such a shame that young lives end so prematurely. This week I read that Star Foster and Leslie Harpold passed away. I have never met either of them. I don’t think about them at any point during the day.

But it’s so depressing to read that young people with so much promise are gone. The Internet opens a lot of doors for everyone, but it also brings a lot of sadness. I didn’t need to read the blog of a young executive who died in New York on that day five years ago. I didn’t need to find out about Idle Days’ rare and fatal blood disease.

It’s as though the promise and potential the Internet brings comes at a price — you have to open your heart and feel all this sadness that you would ordinarily be spared.

(Wow, this sounds hokey. Sorry.)

• 14 Dec 2006