Why I love the internet
My great uncle Wayne died on Sunday after a long battle with prostate cancer. I didn’t know him well; I only met him a few times as a child. He lived on the other side of the state, and my family isn’t too good at traveling to visit one another. My grandfather is understandably upset at the passing of his older brother, and I don’t have many words to comfort him. From what little I know of Uncle Wayne, he was a caring, sweet man, with a good sense of humor. He inherited the family farm and raised cows, all of whom were named after his sisters-in-law. Before it became impossible to stand, he enjoyed singing in the Brethren choir at his nursing home. His first name was Merlin, but no one was ever allowed to call him that. Those were the things I knew about him before he died, and all of them made him seem like someone I’d like to know better, but I feel that, because of the internet, I have a better sense of who he was as a person now than I did before he died. After he passed away, I googled him, curious to see what would come up. I found his obituary, as well as the online guestbook where people could leave messages. Most of the messages simply offered condolences, but one stood out and seemed really telling about who he was as a person:
“Wayne was my Sunday school teacher 30 plus years ago. I will always remember when he took 6 of us Junior High kids to Whitewater State Park to go camping. We all rode in the back of his pick-up truck on the way out there. Sitting on an old mattress amongst all of our bikes. Wayne was a great guy!”
It barely counts as an anecdote, but for some reason, that one guestbook entry makes me feel proud to have been related to this man I barely even knew.
