« Burn, Barry, Burn | Main | Shocker »
April 14, 2006
Goodbye, Mileah
I feel like I was kicked in the stomach this morning.
One of the truly rewarding things about having a blog is that you get to establish friendships with some of the people who read you. You exchange comments with someone for long enough, then someone sends an e-mail, and the next thing you know you feel like the person is a friend, even though you've never met them.
I just learned that one of my friends died last month.
This morning, while doing my usual perusal of my blogroll, it struck me that I hadn't seen an update on my friend Mileah's blog in a few weeks... and I realized that I hadn't seen her here commenting lately either. I clicked over to her blog, and found this sad entry announcing her death. From her hometown paper, the Austin Chronicle:
Mileah Jordan, logistics manager for Stubb's barbecue sauce division and former Liberty Lunch office manager, died overnight March 16 at her Austin apartment. The cause of death was unknown, but Jordan, 43, had had multiple health problems in recent years, said former boyfriend and neighbor Rob Cooley, who found her body the next morning. Jordan grew up in Abilene, studied art history at the University of Dallas, and moved to Austin in 1984.
I never met Mileah; we only sent an e-mail every now and then. We 'fessed up over where we each worked and what we did, we exchanged political rants and anger over the Bush regime, we sent the occasional greeting if we hadn't heard from one another in a while, and that was it. I don't want to overstate things; it's not like we had become mightily close or anything. But I still feel like I knew her. I'd been reading her blog (and blogrolling her) since the angry election campaign of 2004; she was a passionate advocate for her beliefs who loved her country and hated what was happening to it. But more than that, she loved music, she loved art, and she loved writing. She was a good soul. She was my friend.
I've been so focused on the craziness and hectic pace in my own life in the last few months that I haven't kept up with friends all that well... and so it is that here, almost a month later, I am just now learning that a friend of mine has died. I'm sorry, Mileah. I'm sorry that I didn't know until you'd been gone a month. I'm sorry that I didn't leave one last comment on your March 15 entry, the last one you ever wrote, to let you know I was still reading you. I'm sorry that I didn't send an e-mail just saying "I'm really busy right now, but just wanted to say hello." I'm sorry that you're gone, because my blog experience was better for your having been a part of it. Thanks for being there.
Goodbye, Mileah.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thechroniccurmudgeon.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/144
Comments
Wow - that is really sad. That made me have a belly ache.
Posted by: thebeav at April 14, 2006 10:37 AM
Oh how terrible. Count me in on the tummy ache. Goodbye, Mileah.
Posted by: Jill at April 14, 2006 10:18 PM
Thats horrible. Mileah was a good soul, how tragic. Nice tribute.
Posted by: Cuzin Jose at April 16, 2006 07:01 AM
Bye Mileah, I always enjoyed reading your writings and agreed with you most of the time. Terrible news! :(
Posted by: Julie at April 17, 2006 02:54 AM
