The Aneurysm, Part III

Like a fresh idea in an artist's mind,
you fashion things before they come into being.
You sweep the floor like the man
who keeps the doorway.
When you brush
a form clean, it becomes
what it truly is.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 102



E.'s mom gave me the caringbridge.org information where E's husband and dad have been posting updates regularly.

I know about caringbridge. When it got out on Facebook in 2008 that an old schoolmate/acquaintance had nearly lost his triplet toddlers in a house fire, a caringbridge site offered updates and a place to post messages.

I was wondering if this was a moment to make an exception to my experiment, if this was the emergency I said in the beginning would be a reasonable exception, was I being selfish or bad by refusing to get on the internet.

No. There is no substitute for the human voice. I left E's husband a message on his cell phone yesterday, expressing my love and concern and making it perfectly clear I did not expect a call back. He asked Peter to contact me, too, so I wasn’t calling out of the blue.

But how many times have we said, or had said to us, “It’s so good to hear your voice.” There is nothing like hearing the voice, the inflection, of an old friend. It is a small substitute for being in the presence of the actual person. Internet communications cannot be replaced same as a person cannot be replaced. And internet communications cannot make up for the fabric, tenor, laughter, and idiosyncrasies of a human voice of someone who loves you.