Did She Die?

Sometimes I despise the sterility of email. The cold and unfeeling manner of text sent via electronics. You can be a master wordsmith and still fail miserably in your attempt to fill your words with warmth, caring and love.

I was on Facebook and I noticed that a friend had posted a photo album in memory of a sibling. As you might have guessed I am not especially close with this person. We are friendly and connected on Facebook because we did. The reason doesn't really matter.

Anyway, many years ago I was friendly with their sibling but we lost touch. It must be 15 years or so since we last spoke. I was more than a little surprised to see this photo album. It didn't offer any explanation about what happened, but it is hard to believe that someone would write in memory of about someone who is alive.

When I saw it I was shocked. They were my age and I was quite anxious to find out what happened. I don't have a telephone number for my friend on Facebook and didn't want to email them just to ask for it. We don't have any mutual friends that I can contact to ask what happened.

I tried running a search but didn't locate any information. But I couldn't just ignore it. So I sent an email and asked what happened. I tried hard to write something appropriate, but I am not sure that such words exist.

It was far more tactful than the headline of this post. And now I find myself wondering what the answer to the question is. What happened and how. It throws me a bit. It is Elul, won't be long before it is time to chant Unataneh Tokef.

So many questions.