When Lee died last month, I am pretty sure that I had never met him in person. That being said, I felt like I had enjoyed at least the beginnings of a relationship with him. When I first joined the Monkey Cage last spring, Lee was gracious, welcoming, and encouraging; of course, this was all by email. Over the past year, we had a number of group discussions about matters related to the Monkey Cage, and again I had an opportunity to interact – virtually – with Lee in a pleasant professional setting.
The net result of the development of this virtual relationship, however, was that I was completely shocked when John told me in December that Lee was entering hospice care. I had no idea he was even sick, let alone that he was dying. In fact, I think the reason John emailed me at that point in time was because I had just sent out some very generic request/comment to the other authors of this blog. I thankfully at least had a chance to send some thoughts to Lee after I learned he was sick and before he died, but of course this too was by email.
I am trying to decide whether I am dismayed by all this or whether there isn’t something comforting about the fact that the virtual world allows people to continue some aspects of their lives unchanged when the so many other things about their lives are changing so dramatically. I lost my father to brain cancer about a year and a half ago, and by the end there was just no way anyone who interacted with him in person could do so the same way that they would have before he got sick. Now I don’t know whether Lee’s last days were anything like my father’s, but maybe there is something actually nice about that: in my mind, he stayed the same up until the end. And just maybe – I’d like to think – there was something nice for him about developing a relationship with a new colleague who didn’t know he was sick and didn’t treat him any differently because he was dying.
Farewell Lee, I’ll miss you: both the virtual you I started to get to know and the actual you I wish had had the chance to know better.
