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Apr. 23rd, 2026 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vvalkyriEarlier today I got a birthday notification from Facebook for someone from the theater group who moved away a bunch of years ago and died fairly unexpectedly from complications of the pancreatic cancer it had seemed she had bested.
I wrote a birthday message including that Facebook tells me you would have been 44 today and I hope you're somehow aware of all the elegies folk have written in your honor.
I lost count of how many people said something along the lines of she was one of the best people they knew.
There were, as there always are, some basic happy birthdays and I did drop the obituary on one but didn't spend the time to do a lot more.
A couple hours later I got a call from someone who had discovered via birthday greetings or rather birthday 'wish you were still here' on a good friends profile that the reason he hadn't been able to reach her the last several days as she was moving out of a home with her ex-partner was that her ex had killed her then himself this past Saturday.
What ties these together is of course Facebook's birthday system.
I'm thinking a lot about how the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is attempting to leave it. I'm thinking a lot about how no I don't really know how someone several states away could have done anything to help prevent that. I'm thinking a lot about how preventing felons from having firearms did not work in this case. Thinking a lot about how I can't really think of how she could have been better protected other than possibly only being in the ex's presence with escort. But for all I know perhaps she thought it was amicable. I did not know her.
I know a couple of other people in her city but I have no idea what sorts of things random strangers can do to help at this point. Although there were kids in their twenties.
Speaking of birthdays, I had been sort of thinking of trying to have a birthday picnic like object at DCLX like I have in other years. But the weekend is so very full. I have someone who would very much like some help from me out toward Dulles at some point on Sunday but I will have been so non-stop tomorrow and Saturday.. and somehow, I haven't even been through all of the messages on Facebook.
Did I mention it ended up being a really good birthday weekend after all? How has there already been so long? 10 days past.
Argh I had a whole lot of phone calls that I was going to try and manage today.
I wrote a birthday message including that Facebook tells me you would have been 44 today and I hope you're somehow aware of all the elegies folk have written in your honor.
I lost count of how many people said something along the lines of she was one of the best people they knew.
There were, as there always are, some basic happy birthdays and I did drop the obituary on one but didn't spend the time to do a lot more.
A couple hours later I got a call from someone who had discovered via birthday greetings or rather birthday 'wish you were still here' on a good friends profile that the reason he hadn't been able to reach her the last several days as she was moving out of a home with her ex-partner was that her ex had killed her then himself this past Saturday.
What ties these together is of course Facebook's birthday system.
I'm thinking a lot about how the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is attempting to leave it. I'm thinking a lot about how no I don't really know how someone several states away could have done anything to help prevent that. I'm thinking a lot about how preventing felons from having firearms did not work in this case. Thinking a lot about how I can't really think of how she could have been better protected other than possibly only being in the ex's presence with escort. But for all I know perhaps she thought it was amicable. I did not know her.
I know a couple of other people in her city but I have no idea what sorts of things random strangers can do to help at this point. Although there were kids in their twenties.
Speaking of birthdays, I had been sort of thinking of trying to have a birthday picnic like object at DCLX like I have in other years. But the weekend is so very full. I have someone who would very much like some help from me out toward Dulles at some point on Sunday but I will have been so non-stop tomorrow and Saturday.. and somehow, I haven't even been through all of the messages on Facebook.
Did I mention it ended up being a really good birthday weekend after all? How has there already been so long? 10 days past.
Argh I had a whole lot of phone calls that I was going to try and manage today.
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