"All we are is dust in the wind"

(Kansas reference)

I chose this reference because my friend, my dear friend, stayingcalm (Deb) was an affirmed agnostic and would have probably preferred this to the title of my initial entry in the forums, Donne's rather religious "Death be not proud".

Yes, CSN lost a wonderful personality this past weekend, and I lost, as I said, a dear online friend.

Sometimes when we lose folks, they simply vanish into thin air, and we can hope that they outgrew this place, no longer needed it, or we can dread the worst, especially if we have been following a fellow traveller's road of woes and seen that it is headed in a bad direction.

With Deb, she was simply too strong of will, too filled with hope, to allow us, most of us, anyway, to know that she was in such duress.

Fortunately, her children were kind enough to post notice on another site about their mom's demise. It is appreciated greatly, although it is accepted with great sadness.

It always hurts when we lose folks on this site. In fact, any time I hear of anyone being lost to cancer, I feel a pang of regret. It is somewhat personal. But when we lost folks in here, in the CSN community, it seems to have an impact surpassed only by that of losing a family member or friend. These are our friends, even we never see them in person, even if we never hear their voices, even if we never know how they laugh, even if we never know what they really look like.

We know who they are, at least to some degree, by what they say, by what they do.

I know, for example, that Deb was an IT person (or I at least suspect so) because we could talk about technology on a level playing field. I know that she really enjoyed science fiction. I know that she had an intense interest in music, albeit a joyously eclectic one, which she shared with me on occasion via links to interesting film and music.

She pointed me to a number of sites that simply blew me away and I thanked her for that just last week. I'm glad I did that when I did, let her know how much I appreciated her appreciation and observation of life in all of its extraordinary diversity.

She was a person of intellect, to be sure, a person of great personal integrity, a person with a sense of humor, a person of courage and will, and a person who was kind, generous and giving of her time and knowledge.

I hope that she and I, in our agnosticism, are astonished to discover that there is great wonder on the other side of this time we call life on earth, because that is what she deserves, more wonders to satisfy her great curiousity.

I will miss her.

Take care,

Joe