Facebook Friend

"Geoffrey is Unavailable" so says his Facebook page when I hover the mouse over his name and the circular"chat" icon there.  No shit, I think to myself.  But then there is his photo where he is slouched on the sofa in the living room, staring right at me, daring me to make the message pop up one more time, right next to his name and the icon.

These technological tools can be cruel.  I don't have a clue how to take down his page, not that I really want to since it lets me connect with vague vestiges of my son whenever I want.  Occasionally I am called to check his page, by whom or what I cannot know and it makes all the memories and emotions flood back into my consciousness.  Can this be a good thing?  I wonder in self-interrogation.

Through my laptop I can connect to pieces of Geoff.  His house music mixes are still out there in the ether, waiting for anyone to listen.  Old emails, mostly trivial stuff, can be reviewed.  I'm sure if I wanted, I could send him a new one, but I know I won't get a response and not because he is too preoccupied.  He no longer tweets, although most of those escaped my understanding and always seemed a bit rude.

The mother (Carol Glenn) of my son-in-law, Shawn Duke, died on the first day of April this year at 65 years of age.  She had been waiting for months for a new liver, even got to #1 on the transplant list at UCLA but never got the chance to see if that operation could save her life.  Shawn related so clearly at her touching memorial service what it meant to lose someone you love so much, that you cared so much about that in spite of whatever difficulties there were in the relationship, whatever upset there may have been in the too short of a lifetime spent together that he would gladly go through all of those challenges again to be able to experience one more day with his mother.  That's a bargain I would make in a second, to have one more day with my son.  Maybe I should post it on his wall?