Grief is a strange thing. Sometimes it is a gentle ache while others is hits hard and unexpectedly and tears flow. Sometimes it passes quickly, only to hit again over little remembrances even years later. I learned of the passing of Belghast (Mark Temple) a couple of days ago, while doing my daily perusal of my Mastodon feed. Grief hit me hard over the news. The tears kind of grief. I’ve wanted to write a farewell post in his honor, but I had to get a little distance from the news before I could. You don’t have to ever meet a person face to face for them to have an impact on your life. My grief over his passing and watching his struggles since unexpectedly losing his wife has been no less real despite the strange distance of digital relationships.
Digital friends are such a strange phenomenon. In many ways we’re in touch more than with people we live next door to, but in others we don’t actually know each other. We are often a persona, a gaming name, and we keep a certain real life distance from each other. But we are a more constant presence in each others lives than we are with some family members. We chat online, we may play games together, we may participate in blogging festivals or just chat about mutual interests on socials. We spend hours in voice servers sharing one aspect of our personalities with each other.
Bel was many of those things and has been one of those people I don’t know much about in real life, but interacted with in digital life frequently over many years. I’ve been subscribed to Tales from the Aggronaut for a long time, seeing his posts in my inbox regularly, commenting occasionally. I will miss that. We’ve had many long interesting chats over on Twitter and then on Mastodon where many of his mutuals migrated from the Twitter trainwreck. He was a long time advocate of the Fediverse and was responsible for me adopting it as my primary social site.
The feature image on my post is from 2012, back when he encouraged many bloggers through his Newbie Blogger Initiative. He was the cement holding together a very eclectic group of bloggers over the years through NBI and its successor Blaugust, the August festival of blogging he ran for years until last year when the loss of his wife was too much. He had some great mentors who took over the work for him that year. And now unexpectedly, unthinkably, we are looking at a Blaugust without Bel. I’ve become very inactive over the past few years, but if Blaugust happens this year, I will be there.
He had the courage to share his struggles since losing his wife, then learning that he had cancer. It has been a year of raw courage, tenacity and the strange catharsis that gaming and writing is for many of us. He went through therapy, his blog and his digital neighbors have been a kind of therapy as well. But cancer is the scourge that claims too many people. After he was such a regular presence in my digital neighborhood, having him go quiet for a week was worrying. Knowing that he has gone quiet forever now is hard to accept. There were no goodbyes, and yet many of us in his sphere had the chance to wish him happy birthday recently. I am going to count that as my fond farewell to Bel.
Treasure the time you have with people, no matter how you spend it together.
0 Comments