The Dramagic Sky

About this Picture

One of the neat things about this time of year is that when the weather systems change, we get some pretty interesting sky drama going on.

Thursday morning was no exception. We had warmer weather over the weekend and for the first part of the week. Then a cold front moved through, bringing some fast-moving flurries and gusty winds.

The sky on my drive to work Thursday morning was very dramatic. I just typed dramagic by accident - hmmm - what an interesting word: drama + magic, I sort of like it! You heard it here first, folks!

The clouds were very dark and then the sun started to break through just as I got near my workplace. So I pulled over and took quite a few pictures of the sky over Mount Nittany; this is the most dramagic of the photos.

I see it as an image full of inspiration. The dark clouds may sometimes seem like they are winning, but that's not the whole story: the sun is breaking through with the promise of a brighter day.

The song to accompany this photo is the wonderful Doors tune, Break on Through (To the Other Side). I recommend you listen to it LOUD. I did.

A Dedication

I dedicate this image to my online friend Dayle, who quite suddenly and unexpectedly died on this day. She was only 62 years old. I will tell you more about my friend, but first let me tell you how I came to know her.

My own journey with online social networking is a long one, spanning many years. For quite a few years, I was a member of the global group of very active regulars who hung out on the icanhascheezburger.com Web site.

The site is one of the first and most famous places on the Internet to host LOLcat images, which is to say, silly pictures of cats doing and saying silly things, using captions that feature intentionally terrible grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

For example, a kitty is referred to as a kitteh. This is called LOLspeak, and I used to be quite good at it. This is what happens when an English major goes bad, people: I turned to a life of mangling grammar and spelling anonymously on the Internet!

We who frequented the site all gave ourselves avatars and names - my screen name was Gremlin, and my avatar was an image of my big orange cat Gremlin, the cat I had prior to Dexter. Dayle was Scarletkitteh. Many of our cheezfrenz (as we called ourselves, or "people of the cheez") chose the name of a favored kitty or other pet. We hosted events; we became very close. We celebrated each other's birthdays and life events; we held parades and parties online.

When my husband almost died on our wedding day in October of 2008 (I promise I'll tell you that whole story some other day), I sat in the hospital lobby that night crying and typing on the computer. I was not alone; I went online and was instantly surrounded by friends, supporting me and lifting me up in my time of need. In short order, we had hundreds of friends around the globe "beaming" healing thoughts at us, lifting us up to the light, praying for us.

Have you seen the movie The Lord of the Rings, the Return of the King, where the cry goes up for aid for Gondor, and word is passed: a beacon is lit on every mountaintop? (Watch that marvelous scene here.) That's how I felt that night, looking out into the darkness, seeing the light of all those candles, lit for us, surrounded by love.

My online friends held a belated bridal shower for me on the cheezburger Web site. My husband recovered, came home. We began the process of living happily ever after. We enjoy our love as only those can who almost lost each other. We are purposefully happy. We celebrate each day. We carpe the heck out of the diem. Each and every day. I recommend you try it. The more I learn of life, the more I re-learn the lesson: you never know which day may be your last. Do the things you must do, of course, but each and every day, do something you really really want to do, the things that set your heart and your imagination on fire. Why not make them all good days? Whose permission are you waiting for?

I share this anecdote to help explain how it was, how it is, with online friends. Yes, it can be like that. And when it is, you see the best of what there is in people: how the world can be when we reach out to each other in love. When we light a lamp for those we love and support, whom we may have never met.

Then the cheezfrenz discovered Facebook, and our group began migrating to there. In the Facebook world, we used our real names, some of us for the very first time. We found each other; friended each other there. And it turns out that we did it just in time - there were format changes at the icanhascheezburger Web site that caused issues for our group, that made it less fun, that made it hard to host our community there. Eventually, with great regret, most of us stopped hanging out there altogether.

And so Dayle became my friend on Facebook, which is a place where I post lots and lots of my pictures, several to many every day (yes, I post them there before you see them here!). She often "liked" my photos, commenting most often on pictures of our tabbycat Dexter and on the crittergator photos.

I posted some prototypes of the image that eventually became The Submarine Races (my March 4th blip), and she commented: "2:30 in the freakin' morning, and this totally made me laugh out loud!" I am happy to think that I made her laugh out loud in the middle of the night, during what turned out to be one of the last weeks of her life.

Dayle was a mother and grandmother, and she took those responsibilities seriously; she adored her grandchildren and her family. She was in love with her husband; and they were both involved in community gardening. She modeled the kind of love that you wish you might see more of in the world: the kind of love that makes itself real in taking care of other people.

Wednesday evening, she had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital, where they fought to stabilize her blood pressure. Thursday morning we got word, via her family, that Dayle had passed.

I was shocked and saddened, and spent the day Thursday in a grief that I can barely describe. One of the awful things about getting so attached to online friends is that if something bad happens to one of them, you're often so far away that you feel powerless to help. She lived in Illinois, and I live in Pennsylvania, so we never met in real life. In these situations, it seems there is nothing you can offer except kind words and regrets. (I also plan to donate to the community gardening effort Dayle was involved in, by the way. Growing things is awesome, and it has so many wonderful outcomes, some for the body, some for the soul.)

And so I make this posting as my offering for my friend. Dayle, good-bye, my friend I never met. I am sorry you had to leave us so soon. I wish you could have stayed longer. I was privileged to have known you. But I know your family will miss you much, much more, especially your husband and those beloved grandchildren. My heart grieves for them. These will be hard days that follow.

I hope they will remember you and the love you had for them. I hope they will be guided by the lessons you taught them, shored up to get through all of this by the support that you provided them, and strengthened by your love, which remains, of course, and will never leave them.

Under this amazing sky, I light a light that is just for you. I stand as tall as I can, and I hold my light high on this mountaintop. The clouds may be dark, but they will not conquer us. The darkness can never extinguish the light. Look out across the world: on every mountaintop, a light is lit. We honor and celebrate you, and we carry you with us in our hearts. Fare thee well, until we meet again . . .