In the morning gloom today (July in Palm Springs, it was cloudy, though that has gone) I thought I’d clean up the email contact list, as I’ve been needing to take a look at it and see who is on there I haven’t talked to or connected with in ages.
And so I saw dead people.
I was shocked to see my mother’s name staring out at me among the various Arnolds on my list – and there are many of them. Mom has been gone for going on two years now and was never much of an email communicator, though occasionally…. and of course, I’d seen her email address there before since she died but just didn’t have the heart to erase it… as if, by keeping it there, I could pretend she was still around, still accessible – and I know she is, just not via email.
So I let that go.
There were a couple more — Christiane Covington, a writer and script supervisor I did not know terribly well, but whose path I would cross every now and then. She was researching a script about dolphins in Hawaii and there was a terrible accident and she drowned.
And then there was Kirk Kincaid. He was a really charming guy who lived just outside of New York in New Jersey. I’d met him through the internet on a prior trip back east and discovered that he, too, had had a horrible accident – he was walking along a sidewalk when an SUV jumped the curb and ran into him, killing him.
So Gerry, Christiane and Kirk – you’re no longer in my yahoo address book, but in my heart today.