NOTES FROM THE DIGITAL TOMBSTONE
When a friend passed on, her social media account keeps our virtual friendship alive, writes
college kid in Malaysia complaining about her life.
What was interesting, however, was that I was getting a lot of hits from America.
One of these Americans, just so happened to be Karen.
She would leave very amusing comments on almost all of my posts, and I, in turn, would do the same with hers.
Just like me, she, too, was blogging about her life. Karen, I would find out later, was more than 30 years older than me.
A cancer survivor, a stage manager, a published author and a divorcee with four adult children, she led a most interesting life that’s full of its own unique challenges and joys.
A friendship that began on Blogspot would later make its way to FB, where I would learn more about her.
One particularly interesting bit to me as a young woman was that she had a son, who, at that point was serving in the United States Marine Corps.
“You must come visit me here, Lidia. I’ll make sure he’s around when you are,” Karen would tease me on FB Messenger.
Just to make things even more embarrassing, she would send me pictures of him and continuously tease me about being her daughter-in-law.
I stopped blogging after I transferred to Australia to do my undergrad studies, but my virtual friendship with Karen went on through FB Messenger and the occasional Skype calls.
It might seem strange to most that a Malaysian girl and an American woman with more than a 30-year age gap would be fast friends, but we were.
Karen was a delight. She was the cool American aunt I never had.
Always so quick with her witty retorts and her reading recommendations.
Always so full of sharp observations and always so proud of the adult I’ve become.
Without realising it, Karen became a prominent figure in my life — without us even meeting.
Sometime late last year, we began seriously talking about me visiting her in America.
Karen and I started planning an American road trip together, one that would involve stopping in New Orleans during Mardi Gras so that we could collect bead necklaces and “cute boys”.
We talked about renting “one of those fancy cars with the top down”, so we can pretend to be Thelma and Louise. (She’s Louise, of course.)
We would also stop by her marine son’s home so that I could finally see how handsome he was.
She was so proud when I told her that I would be going for the Khazanah-Wolfson Press Fellowship programme at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
“I remember when your biggest concern was making good grades for A-Levels. Now, look at you,” she said.
“Make sure you learn as much as you could while in Cambridge and make sure you send me a postcard.”
That was the last I spoke to her, in early April.
In early May, I received an FB message from a mutual (Internet) friend that Karen had passed away, from complications from a knee surgery.
She was 63 years old. That very morning, I had posted a postcard to her American address from Cambridge.
“With love, your Malaysian friend in England, Lidia,” I wrote on the postcard. I do not know if it ever reached her.
It’s been months since Karen passed away, but almost every week, I will receive some FB notification, or other of all the things Karen and I shared digitally over the years.
Everytime that happens, I would feel a strong longing to message her on something or other... but that’s no longer possible.
Karen is no longer around now. I will no longer have the chance to meet her.
What I do have, however, are the memories of our friendship and her FB account that, for some reason, seems larger than life now.
Her FB account, or her digital tombstone as I now come to think of it, seems more important than ever as it serves as the reminder of our digital friendship.