Technology's Power in Death

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because my father passed away unexpectedly last week. It's amazing that writing a sentence like that is so easy, yet the experience of it is so hard. What has made it easier is email. I was able to use email and Google search engine to find old friends of Dad's to whom he hadn't spoke in years, and decades even. Through email, Dad's seat partner in high school, with whom he used to trade notes and pose as her "date" for when she was dating boys her parents didn't like, showed up at our beachside memorial. I had never met almost half of the people at Dad's memorial, and they knew this part of him I never knew. That was wonderfully freeing. He had a life before me and I'll have a life after him. I am once again dazzled by what technology has done for me.

My mother, a technology whiz in her own right, has used Windows Movie Maker to create these tear-jerking videos composed of photos and mementos from his life. She even made a basic Web page for him. Can I add that they have been divorced for a hundred years? She's just that kind of Mom.