Keeping Watch

When I went to Egypt, I gave my mom a geography lesson. Here's where Egypt is. No, I'm not close to Israel even though it's only half an inch away on the map. If I tell you I'm in Cairo, and something happens in Luxor, that means I Wasn't There.

But I can't blame her for worrying. Or my grandma for wearing out hte church floor praying for my safety. Or my Dad for freaking out at home because I took a taxi by myself in the middle of the day.

I think they are all overreacting a bit but I do understand and sympathize. For the most part, I let them off the hook. Now that I'm the one with friends far away, I'm guilty as well.

I Facebook stalk Marium in Karachi just in case. Jess' Word On Wales blog is bookmarked. I keep track of my friends to make myself feel better. I can't help them if for some reason they were to need me.

Perusing the headlines on Sunday, I saw that a man had been shot by the police in an incident of soccer violence in Italy. I took a deep breath, I thought my friend Marshall was in the area.

Odds are, if an American college student had been shot in Italy, I'd have heard about it already. But then again maybe not.

Marshall wasn't the headline. I talked to him today and remembered he was in Prague all weekend, nowhere close. My condolences to the family of the young Italian. May he rest in peace.

The real shock of the day came at 1 am after coming home from a night out. I don't know how I happened on the Facebook group "In Memory of Brian Volkerding" but I didn't want to see the page. Titles like that mean only one thing.

The only information provided was that Brian had died unexpectedly on October 27th at Ohio State University. His obituary was equally uninformative. Not that cause of death is relevant to the fact of death.

I hadn't talked to Brian in a couple years but I did know him. We played on an intramural coed soccer team for a year in high school. I remember him as quiet and funny, very nice.

I have no deep value judgments to make on these events. Simply the fact that people I know shouldn't be dying.

My magazine writing textbook had a chapter on leads and endings. For endings dealing with death it had this to say:

"Nothing more needs to be said. Nothing more should be said. End of a life; end of an article."

End of a blog.