Virtual Life (and Death)

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When I was pregnant with my first child, I had not been in England long and I didn’t have many friends. None of the friends I did have were pregnant and I felt as if I had no one to talk to that was going through the same thing I was. So my husband, being the Internet-focused man he was and is, found me a mailing list.

As I was due in May, I joined a list called MayMoms. It was a complete turning point in my life.

At full strength there were over a hundred of us, women all due to give birth in May of 1996. We shared fears and concerns, we asked for ‘reality checks’ over whether we were imagining things that were happening to us, we talked about babies kicking and growing bigger and midwives and obstetricians and birth plans and everything to do with having a baby. And when our babies were born we talked about weights and feeding and poops (It’s amazing how much new mothers can have to say about baby poop!) and milestones. And later we discussed baby blues and postpartum depression and finding yourself apart from being ‘Mom’. And then came siblings and school and so on.

We discussed our lives. Some of us even met in person. We made our own yearbooks, complete with photos of our family members. We knew each other.

I was connected to a whole group of women (admittedly mostly white collar, upper-middle-class, highly intelligent, educated women — not anywhere near the norm of all women and we knew that) that were my friends. I knew these women, cared about them, gave my input when they asked for it, and asked for theirs in return. We talked members through illness, divorces, infidelity, unemployment, buying and selling houses, moving to new countries, you name it.

And just yesterday, one of us died.

I haven’t read the list actively in the past year. I’ve checked in now and then, and one woman in particular has been good to flag up important news to those of us who had become ‘on the fringe’ of the group. It was her email that let me know I’d lost a friend.

A friend I’ve never met in person, never spoken to on the phone, I probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. But she was my friend. We met in the virtual world, far from my everyday life, but our connection was real. I knew about her illness, that she had cancer. I knew she went into remission, and then I knew she was ill again. And now she’s gone.

I will miss her.