An online friendship … and loss

As you know, about 15 years ago, I started my first blog. As I’ve noted before, it was part of a project undertaken by a number of other people, and it was there I met my first blogger friends, a small, tight-knit group. I met Deloney through this project, although a search of that blog shows his first comment to me was on my last post of that blog, back in December 2007. He said, “… I do want you to keep writing. Anything at all.” I was always going to write. But his encouragement helped.

Blogging and commenting on each other’s blogs meant that we talked about our lives and our history, and I believe our characters showed through in what we chose to write, and the way we wrote it. The comments sections were where we often came together as a small community, supporting, encouraging, laughing, and occasionally crying. We all went on to write in different blogs and projects, though one or two of us have fallen by the wayside in more recent years, and continued our support of each other that way.

Deloney, sadly, had a habit of deleting blogs he was finished with, denying us the option of going back and re-reading his work. He wrote beautifully, small prose poems that eventually became a book, The Songbook of Haunted Boys and Girls. He had a naughty streak, dropped in the occasional sexy reference, and flirted outrageously in the comments with the women in our small chapter of writers. Though to be fair, we did our share of (safe, virtual) flirting back!

I’ve just found a comment he made, “Mali in a bikini on Christmas Day?” that made me laugh. We didn’t share photos at the time, so he didn’t know my bikini days were long gone!

In my Friends-Not-Yet-Met series, I wrote a Deloney edition. It’s worth popping over to see the comments too:

“This is an ode to Deloney, he who is the master of the microblog before it was known as the microblog, the true expert in saying so much in so few words who always manages to convey the chill Canadian air or the smell of the bakery downstairs or the taste of something simple prepared with love, haunting us in a brief paragraph at most two; Deloney, who manages to flirt with a literary wink or nudge but is often more blatant than that, shocking but delighting his harem of blog readers giving us all a naughty shiver down our spine … or maybe even somewhere else. Gasp.”

Fortunately, that small group from those early days kept in touch, in various ways – social media, or other blogging projects, or private chatting options. Each time we would find one of the others in social media or elsewhere, we would “come out” as our true selves, as so many of us used pseudonyms in our blogging identities. This was a big adjustment. We had got so used to Deloney, talking about his fire escape, the bakery downstairs, and the summer days of his youth, exploring and delighting in girls, his cats and his Mlle Vague that it was a shock to know that he was not actually debonair Deloney, but was, in fact, Wayne. Although earlier, he had noted that “Over the years I’ve morphed into my invention Deloney.”

My online friendships have occasionally delivered surprises/shocks. They emphasise both the best of online friendships – when we celebrate with our friends and offer support and love when times are harder – and the saddest – that physical distance when we want to help someone going through a hard time, or hug someone with joy. I’ve seen new relationships, immigration for love, adoption (of children, and pets) and births, the growth and development of my friends and their children, house repairs, relationship breakups, the whole gamut of life experiences.

But nothing was more shocking than waking up almost four years ago and reading that Wayne’s beloved Beth had been suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumour and had only weeks (27 days, it turns out) to live. We grieved for him. With him. But that is when he started slipping away. From his online friendships, from his real life friendships too, it seemed, and from joy in life itself. Grief overtook him, and although he tried to recover and find a future, it was very difficult for him. I learned this weekend, from another of my blogger friends, that Wayne has gone. News that I had feared, but nonetheless news that was still an awful shock.

I wrote this when he published his book:

” … These little slices of life are sweet, never bitter, always moving, often funny, and sometimes risqué. They stay with you – haunting in the very best sense – and always leave you wanting to know more.”

Deloney, you were loved and adored, and you will always be a part of our group. You’ll haunt us in the very best sense.

I hope he is at peace now, with Mlle Vague at his side.