ALE's Girls

Months drag on, as September looms closer,my birthday draws near. On my birthday, it will mark one year since I spoke with my dear tweep Just4ALE.  I am dreading the fall and the anniversaries it will bring reminding me that ALE is gone. I am one who loves deeply, a friend is a friend for life, and when they leave this life before me, that changes nothing for me. Thankfully, I am not floating along on this sea of grief alone, I have a lifeboat filled with beautiful women.  ALE's Girls were drawn together in a supernatural way that really only we understand.

 Anna-Lisa was a beautiful woman who I had come to know from reading her stories, then meeting on Twitter which graduated to exchanging emails. When she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, she started emailing a select group of her Twitter followers and friends. For me, I didn't know any of her other Twitter friends except for one, I didn't know the rest of the group and really couldn't talk to anyone.

The day ALE found her ''soft place to land'', ( this is a poem and term she clung to while battling cancer, something that gave her hope and her wish for the future)  I was a wreck, I didn't know who to turn to or talk to. The one friend I did know, Perry was really struggling with her own grief. Having tweeted with ALE for some time, I knew her close friends on Twitter's handles, so I started tweeting them randomly. I felt so alone, floating along in a sea of grief, drowning in something that nobody else around me understood.

These wonderful women, started tweeting me back. Her dear Twitter friend 1Lavishone was a rock, she took ALE's followers under her wing in her own time of grief. She was my rock in those very early days and started bringing all of ALE's girls together. Somehow, a group of women formed, a life boat in a raging sea of grief.

For me, I feel that ALE herself orchestrated this group. It was her friendship, spirit and personality that drew us together. Those first tenuous days of grief, we started picking up members one by one. There were lengthy DM sessions, sharing our memories and feelings. We all loved this dear women, who made us each feel special and one of a kind. An amazing women had built herself a network of amazing friends and left behind a grief support group like no other.

My tweeps grew tired of hearing about my grief, at one point I even lost a follower over it. One friend told me I did kind of drag it out. They didn't know this wonderful women, they wouldn't understand the gravity of losing a friend to cancer at a young age.  I don't fault them, they just didn't know her and it really didn't matter to them.

Thankfully, ALE's girls formed and have stuck together. I love that when I hear a song that reminds me of ALE, I can tweet the girls and mention it. This past week, one of ALE's dear follower Lipca tweeted 1Lavishone that hearing about Comic Con reminded her of ALE. I jumped in and was able to share how I felt the same way. We all miss seeing Twitpics of food, her dogs Maya and Riley, her take on the Twilight fandom, watching her play TwiFicTuesday, her calling us ''cutie'', and her love of classic Rock. We can share the little nuances of grief, things about ALE that we miss and grieve. In our own way, we are still keeping her on Twitter with us.

This morning, I woke up to a group tweet sharing the love of being ALE's girls. 1Lavishone said, ''I want to keep us all together forever.'' I know we will be, we have become each others ''soft place to land'' a safe place to share our feelings safely and freely. We don't judge the weird way our grief affects us, we understand in a way others wouldn't. For me, I am so thankful that I haven't had to navigate this alone and have had several shoulders to lean on.

It has been wonderful to make new friends. I was able to meet up with 1Lavishone and PerryMaxed to eat breakfast at ALE's favorite place, and celebrate her friendship together. One of our members even made necklaces for us to wear. I often wear my leather strand with peace,love and music represented, those were ALE's twitter avatar and saying. It is such a comfort to all of us that wear them proudly.

Me with my ALE necklace

I am so thankful for these women, I have come to love them all dearly and now they have become friends as well. They are my lifeboat in the sea of lonely grief and I hope that I am part of their's as well. Thank you ladies for being wonderful and allowing me to be a part of your group. Not one of you turned your nose up to a stranger, instead everyone took everyone else in and accepted them immediately. It is an amazing thing to share in and be part of. I know we are honoring our amazing friend and somewhere in her soft place, she is smiling brightly.

Much love to 1Lavishone our beautiful leader, PerryMaxed, MooSpot, Lipca, Mostlyalurker, Dreamweaver, and Milk402. You've all become very dear to me and I am so grateful to be a part of this group. We didn't have a choice in losing our friend to the effing cancer, as ever with her giving spirit in the end our beautiful ALE gave us a lasting gift, seven new friendships none of us expected. Like 1Lavishone said today, ''It gives me such a warm feeling to think of her and all of us.'' that is exactly how we all feel. What a wonderful blessing, I hope someday that we call all meetup in one place at the same time. What a dream come true that would be.

 Thank you ALE for the last precious gift, we all miss you so much and always will. You may have gone too soon but you are still a part of Twitter with this precious group of friends.

Goodbye Kitty Boo Boo, My Dear Friend

Two years ago, I read a story on a fiction site I frequently read at. The story was set in the San Francisco bay area, Menlo Park to be specific. I had recently been living at Stanford with Marty after his transplant in the Menlo Park area. I started messaging back and forth with the author Just4ALE on the site. We quickly struck up a friendship.

We moved that friendship over to Twitter. As you see, there is a running theme with me and Twitter. Five years ago this month, my friend Di asked me to "follow" her on Twitter. We were in some of the first 500,000 users on the site. Then I met T in Boston via Twitter and she introduced me to these writers. Being a reader, I love having free stories to read all the time. I started talking to people who read the stories and joined their community.

Fast forward to meeting ALE and the story above. We started tweeting back and forth. I loved when she would share pictures of her dogs, when she would tweet pictures of her fabulous dinners at five star restaurants and her love of 70's classic rock. I am convinced she knew every 70's rock title by heart.

She and I both loved the same kind of stories. I read through her entire favorite list and loved every single one. She was always having something kind to say, never said a bad word about anyone. She was like a big sister to me often mentoring and encouraging me. She would often tell me I was beautiful, she loved when I had my picture with a smile on Twitter. She would tell me she liked the smiles.

Last fall, she got sick. At first it seemed like the flu but it quickly went south. She was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. She was young and healthy, it just didn't seem possible. ALE was a very private person, who didn't like attention drawn to herself. For a long time, I didn't even know her real name which I later learned was hidden in her handle.

She blessed a group of us with allowing us in and sharing her journey with us via email. Often the emails would start with song titles describing how she was feeling at the time. For the past 11 months, I have been blessed to be on the journey with ALE praying for her and supporting her from afar via email. Last Christmas she gifted us with something from Life is Good. She wore a Life is Good t-shirt almost everyday and wanted us to have something. I got a brown backpack that I use for my swimming and biking.

She was one of the people to deem me a Pollyanna. She would often say that when I would email her positive thoughts about kicking this cancer to the curb. I changed my bi-line for her a few months back. She was a faithful reader of my blog.

This summer, I tried to meet up with her while we were at Sea World but alas that week began hell for her. It wasn't meant to be, we had talked on the phone but never got the chance to meet in person. In September, she confirmed what I think many of us didn't want confirmed. We all hoped and prayed for a miracle but it wasn't meant to be.

ALE often asked us to pray that she would find a "soft place to land" a line from a poem she had shared with us last year. As this last month wore on and things got worse, we all prayed she would find her soft place.

On my birthday, she tweeted me to wish me Happy birthday. She was so selfless like that. We had once read a silly story where the main character called the other character "Kitty Boo Boo" and I had taken to calling her that as her nickname ( everyone knows I love to nickname people) so she started calling me Boo Boo Kitty. She wished me a happy birthday using that name. It turned out to be one of her very last tweets.

ALE taught me grace, humility, outlook, positivity, kindness, generousity, peace, love and joy.She handle this  disease with so much class. She stayed quiet, many didn't even know. She fought so hard all the way to the very end. I learned so much from her. After she emailed to tell us that she wouldn't find her cure, I wrote her back and told her all of those things. I am thankful to have had the chance to tell her just what she meant to me. I told her that I would live everyday the rest of my life for her and live with no regrets.

This past summer, I lived without abandon and she saw that. In many ways, I had already started living for her too. I was reading my email replies to her last night, sometimes they were short and didn't say much after I started working again and traveling. I know that she knew these things and it was okay, she was happy for me.

I am so grateful to have known ALE even for a short time. She made a difference in the lives of so many and she will be greatly missed. Goodbye my Kitty Boo Boo, rest softly.

Thank you Roberta for giving me permission to write this blog. To Mary, Michelle, Dream,Perry for being there for me and letting me talk it out while respecting ALE's privacy. Also thank you to E.L. James for comforting me last week, it meant the world to me and your story that was shared was comforting.