I’ve been putting off this post for a few days. The other night, I was catching up with some of the book blogs I’m subscribed to, and when posts were popping up with “Dewey’s Read-a-Thon” in the title, I cried for a good long time. The grief that has been rolling in and out over the past year is still fresh, and I honestly didn’t expect myself to react in that way to what I should have been anticipating for a few weeks. Sure, I knew that the anniversary of Dewey’s death was approaching, but I completely forgot about the Read-a-Thon. I shouldn’t have, and maybe that’s why I crumpled. Now that I’m trying to piece together the last couple of months of her life–what I was doing, what we were talking about–I remember now that I had a hard time finishing even one book during last year’s Read-a-Thon. We had a brand-new kitten, Corey had a soccer practice that day, and Jamie was working. I still tried, though, because I loved participating, and I loved and wanted to support Dewey.
Dewey was a real-life friend of mine. Her death was devastating, and there’s a small group of us who were her friends that are still struggling every day. There are days when we laugh about things she wrote about her husband or her cat or the crazy birds in her backyard. Then we turn right around and cry because we are so angry with the suddenness of it all, the fact that we didn’t get to say goodbye. I remember the first time I got a package from Dewey. It was filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies and I ate every one of them right then and there. Over the years, we talked about so many different things, and I’m still honored to have been such a close friend of hers.
But I have a tendency to avoid uncomfortable situations, especially if they make me sad. Dewey’s death was one of the saddest moments in my life, right up there with the death of Jamie’s dad, a childhood friend of mine, and a few other family tragedies. The moment I heard she was gone, a part of me died, and I spent the rest of the day in bed, crying on and off, avoiding phone calls, mostly avoiding email, and asking myself “why” over and over. And I had to move on. Thanksgiving was painful because I didn’t know how to explain my “real life” internet friendship with Dewey to my family. I had never talked about her to anyone but Jamie. So I left it alone, pretended nothing was wrong, and just went through the motions required of any typical holiday. And over the past few weeks, I have been avoiding the knit-a-long group, the book blogs in my reader, and even my friends.
This year, I want to participate in Dewey’s Read-a-Thon not just to read, but to honor her. I’m telling you right now that she’s probably laughing it up in the after life, and would probably make fun of me for being so reverent in this post. But I needed to write something publicly. This year, when you’re reading for Dewey, read for her friends, too. Those of us who stood behind her during the good times and the bad. I loved that she was so passionate about her blog and her book blog friends. She left behind a magnificent legacy in the blogging community and we’re so proud of her.
