Peace, GG

Strange things brewing. For reasons unclear to me I, along with another hapless cohort, am spearheading the committee to plan the 20th Reunion of Westmoor High School's decidedly lackluster—but genuinely upstanding—Class of 1984.

Other classmates have offered to help along the way, notably one GG, who I remembered vaguely as a tall, friendly kind of guy. He wanted to set up a web site for our class. We took him up on the offer, and he put a skeleton site up in just a few days, making it part of his own domain. A few months ago, I received an e-mail message from him. He was sorry, he said, to have dropped the ball on the site, but he was ready to get it going and wanted to know what we'd like to include. A message board? A list of missing classmates? He could do whatever we wanted. I told GG that the committee was about to have its first meeting, and I'd let him know after that. "Sounds good!" he wrote back.

Then yesterday, my Reunion Cohort called me early in the morning. Had I seen the obituaries? GG was dead—no cause given or even hinted at. He left behind five kids and a wife (a fact which I would soon discover to be a bit inaccurate). While she read the obit to me, I typed GG's url into my browser. His site was unfinished, but there was a link to his blog. I clicked.

He'd started it at the beginning of September, right around the last time we'd been in touch. In his second entry, he wrote that his divorce was almost final, that it was hard on the kids, but better than living in a war zone. A few posts later, he wondered if anyone would ever read his blog. The last post, made at the end of September was a complaint about California's recent recall of Governor Davis. He was pissed, was GG, despite the fact that he was a Republican who should have been overjoyed. His last line announced that he'd be voting to keep Davis in office, which makes GG okay in my book.

I'd love to tell GG that yes, someone read his blog. But he probably already knows that, right? Rest. In. Peace.