Recently a blog disappeared.

It wasn’t mine, it wasn’t even a friend of mine, but it was one which I read routinely while it was being published, and I find myself looking up every couple of months when I need inspiration. Or I should say found, as it has now been deleted.

We can never know what other people’s reasons were for a choice, whether some other actor was behind their action, indeed whether some larger-than-thou corporate decision-maker forced their hand. All I know is that the blog is gone.

The words I used to look forward to reading, even though they hadn’t changed in years, were a reminder that whilst life is hard, there’s still hope. And when there’s no more hope, when life is gone, you can still have a voice. Still touch people, make an impact.

Unless someone deletes you. The act itself feels so final, the idea that there is no more to learn from someone who has passed; I never feel that, I re-live the moments I had with lost friends and family, and often feel I learn and develop new memories of them just from whatever pieces of their life and world I am lucky enough to read, see or hear.

I confess that I realise that maybe this scares me and affects me more than most because I could well find the same thing happening to me one day. I won’t have children as a legacy, I hope I will leave friends with many memories of me, but of course those fade and alter with time. What I hope will last as an essence of me after I am gone are my words. My thoughts, dreams, hopes and experiences written down for you all to read, now, and sometime wonderfully in the future. To pass something on from a life which is often confusing, lost, ridiculous and entirely embracing the unknown.

I’m not planning to stop writing anytime soon.

But when I do, please don’t delete me.