Death and social media

We were on a plane between Nashville and LaGuardia last night when, on a whim, we punched up Wi-Fi for $10 and found a surreal update from our brother on Facebook. "RIP Uncle G.... you were a good, good man and will be missed."

People die every day. People are then missed. Uncle Gordy is now one of them, and while we weren't close social media had played a strange role in making us miss him more. Gordon Halley was born in 1926 in New England and moved to the western United States years before we were born. We hardly saw him at all, until about six months ago his photo popped up in Facebook as a friend recommendation. Activities: Wild bunch (Seniors at church). Interests: Aviation, photography. Favorite TV Shows: Jeopardy, Dancing with the Stars.

Remorseful that we hadn't connected with our mom's brother in at least two decades, we friended him back, then picked up the phone and called. Gordy had a warm, gravelly voice. He also had cancer, a rare blood thing, something to do, he thought, with cleaning engine spark plugs with no gloves for hours a day as a youth back in the Army. We got off, said what the hell, booked a plane ticket and took mom, aging herself with cancer, in a wheelchair through connecting airports across country to reunite with her brother. It was a spontaneous trip, inspired in part by the silly Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man" in which one opens oneself up to the world to experience new things. Yes, we said, let's go.

At the end of that California visit we somehow got Mom back up the steps of the small plane for the return flight home. Los Osos, Calif., has an airport about as big as a Chili's restaurant. Gordy had shown up a few minutes too late to hug his sister good-bye, so he and his son, a tall grown man himself, stood by a chain link fence in the predawn light, up an embankment above the Tarmac at the little California airport, waving at us. They looked like two cowboys, a scene out of romance film, two silhouettes with arms in the air. We'd just spent four days with a good man we'd almost forgotten; seen his leathery tan, his quiet humor, the way his grandchildren out West drove hours just to spend time with the man they loved. We're cool with all this, we thought. This isn't too sad. And then our mom started to cry.

Social media is hyperbole and lunacy and silly pokes in comical graphics, perhaps soon to fade as the ham radio fad or the telegraph years before. But it does connect people beyond their circles in ways we do not expect. It also leaves a digital legacy, how permanent, we don't know, but we wonder about our own trail of online breadcrumbs as we read now that Gordy liked Mexican and Chinese food, and women too, and has a granddaughter going to school and had gray hair, blue eyes, a good smile and a core belief that the west coast is fabulous!

No one wants to hear someone has died on Facebook. But if you listen closely, you may find voices worth visiting even if they are not next door.