Last night while I was tweeting about Alex Jones’ appearance on the Piers Morgan show and how sometimes the screen on my iPhone 4s gets big, really big and I’m not able to size it down no matter how frantically I tap on it, I came across a tweet on the passing of @weywerdSun.
My first reaction was shock. What?! I couldn’t believe it. I thought of his avatar, how much I liked that he was facing the sun, welcoming it. Then I went to his Twitter page and re-read his description: “The more I learn the less I know, but I’m still curious, seek both wisdom and compassion, believe All is One and that ignorance is the enemy,” which along with his avatar is what made me follow him.
I think that my second reaction is still ongoing. It is between acceptance and disbelief. He’s gone. Yesterday, his granddaughter tweeted that he had passed at the end of November and was found with his iPad on his lap. She added, “Thank you all for your thoughts it’s good knowing so many people cared about my grandpa, thank you! Sorry you found out so late.”
So, yes I accept that he has passed. Yet, I still cannot believe it and I’m also taken aback by how much his death has affected me. I did not know him personally. I don’t know his real name or where he lived. I just found out that he was a grandfather and that he used an iPad, probably to find sources for his blog posts, like I do. That is all, yet I’m deeply affected by his death.
Is it because this is the first time that someone I “know” on Twitter dies? Is it because death is something that happens in the physical world and I had never associated it with a virtual one? Is it because the voice of someone who was kind, compassionate and curious is now forever silent? I don’t know.
However, I do know this. All those who think that technology isolates, that it alienates us from each other are wrong. I began my Twitter adventure hesitantly. I wasn’t sure how to use it or what to say. I thought it was a superficial tool and I hated the 140-character limit and its grammar-killing consequence. But I have found an incredible community of funny, caring people who are passionate about issues and about connecting with others.
It has taken me by surprise how close I feel to those with whom I connect on a regular basis. I never imagined that I could care for total strangers who I have never met, often without even a photo to go by. I get to know them by the short sentences that they write and by those that they retweet or favor. Yet, I can honestly say, without any sarcasm, that I love my tweeps.
It is true that I have also encountered haters. But for every one of those who tweet to tear down, I have found so many more who tweet to build a better world. @weywerdSun was one of them. It seems that his last tweet was on November 25th, three days after Thanksgiving. This is turn makes me have disparate thoughts of gratitude. I’m grateful that he got to see President Obama being re-elected, that we mutually followed and connected with each other and that he died peacefully instead of in a hospital hooked up to machines.
@weywerdSun followed 5,482 entities; had 5,661 followers; and wrote 108,201 tweets. A bit more knowledge about a man I knew very little about but whom I will deeply miss. I hope, with all my heart, that he’s resting in peace and I dedicate this refrain to him from Kansas’ Carry On My Wayward Son:
Carry on my wayward son
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more