As some of you know, I haven’t been on Fluther much in the last few months. Initially it was due to the fact that I was extremely busy and there were some illnesses with a few friends and family members that required trips to the hospital.

As soon as I had a window of opportunity to get on Fluther, I found out that Alan Rickman had passed away. Those of you that know me fairly well, know that I’ve always been a huge Alan Rickman fan so that hit me pretty hard, but I was dealing with it. A week later, I finally made it on to Fluther and I saw a cryptic question from one of the other Jellies asking about how to deal with the death of a fellow Jelly. I thought they were talking about our other friend, @gailcalled, whom I had mourned and lamented and discussed with other Jellies, several months back. What I didn’t realize is that they were talking about @Adirondackwannabe. And then I saw something about @Unbroken.

I was shocked to my heart and core. I couldn’t believe it and thought it was all a bad dream and that I must have misread something, but then I realized it was true. I have yet to read the threads regarding those two lost Jellies. I haven’t yet been able to do it and I still don’t know what happened.

A week later, when I was thinking about reading the threads, but then I went on to Facebook and found out that a friend/co-worker of mine had died. They said it was a sudden heart attack, but I think it was actually a suicide, for reasons that I won’t go into.

So for the past few months, it’s been loss after loss and in the meantime I was busier than I usually am, so I neglected Fluther and my friends on here and I still haven’t been able to read the threads about our friends who have left us after Gail passed away. I just haven’t had the mental strength to do it, so I don’t know any of the details.

I still have the last message that Addy ever sent me. We used to chat rather regularly. He was one of my posse behind the scenes who I often consulted when I encountered a tough “relationship” question. He would always give me encouragement and would offer a male perspective so that I could answer the question from a more informed point of view, and he often helped me to calm down before saying anything inflammatory, so in that way, he was like the voice of reason. Our last conversation was about food, though. We loved talking about dinner parties and recipes and such.

I didn’t know Unbroken very well, but it still came as another blow to hear that another Jelly had left this earth.

When Gail passed away, none of the rest of this stuff had yet happened, so I was able to talk with some of the other Jellies, and with her daughter on the tribute thread. That was very comforting, especially to know that Milo was OK and well taken care of, but everything that happened afterwards pretty much threw me into a tail spin of shock and mourning and then I wasn’t able to get online again for the last 3 weeks, simply due to things happening in life, but I feel like I should have been here, and I wasn’t.

I feel kind of lost and sad, but also angry and confused. I’m sure a lot of you do, or did, feel the same way. I just hope that you can forgive me for being away for so long. Because I’m sure it looks as though I just didn’t care, which is so far from the truth.

I never knew Gail or Unbroken, or Adirondackwannabe in real life, and before Fluther, I never thought that you could really know somebody online, or become “real” friends with them. Fluther made me learn that that is not only possible, it happened to me in droves.

There are other Jellies on here that I consider to be good/close friends, and I hope they too can forgive me for seeming to be silent or absent all of this time on both Fluther and Facebook. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by since I first heard about the death of Gail that I haven’t thought of all of you (and especially about some of you, whom I’m pretty sure you know who I mean).

But like Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, when referring to the Scarecrow, only in this instance I’m Dorothy and Adirondackwannabe is the Scarecrow, “I think I’ll miss you most of all.”

Can you forgive me?

Topics: death, mourning, loss, friendship, coping, forgiveness