Far and away

Deaths in a far off land have never resonated as much as they have recently. The ones who went lived just like everyone else. They had blogs and social networking profiles, were members of communities and left a trail of their existence on a bunch of bytes. A click reveals who they were - people like and unlike me, but now more than a lexical name. In death, they're closer to me than they could have been if they had been alive. But they seem so present on their webpages. They had interests and things to look forward to, they belonged to many places and had faces of friends testifying to their own little specialness. Their online selves won't dissolve away to join their corporeal counterparts, but will loiter, forgotten, maintaining an eerie status quo.

And if you don't believe in an after-life, how do you say "Rest in Peace"? You can only be angry at lives cut short. Potential snipped mid-way. Even more reasons to continue today.