You Can Shove "The Notebook" Right Up Your...

Late last month, my buddy NewsComa, whose opinion I always respect, pointed me to the drama going on at Atomic Tumor. As most of you know, AT is a young man who shared with the bloggosphere the ultimately painful experience of losing his lovely young wife and mother of their two children to some sort of raging infection. When I first started lurking, her condition was serious but not dire. As I checked back in daily, then hourly her prognosis became bleaker and AT's emotions became rawer and even more personal.

I was rapt at the depth of emotions and also the attention to mundane details of day to day life that this brave young man was sharing with anyone who had the ability to open a browser and type in a url. This worried me. I tend to get too empathetic in a bad way. Hell, I got uptight following along with the trauma of BusyMom's sick laptop, much less the ripping apart of a young family. I actually woke up in the middle of the night thinking that I felt some cosmic headslap that the end had come for GAC. I didn't even know these people. How could I be so affected by the plight of total strangers? It gave me a sort of skeevy, stalkeresque feeling about myself.

But in the end, I think that AT chronicled this tragic month for himself because it was the thing he knew how to do best. I don't think he cared if we watched. He wanted to share his Barbara Jamie with the world and to have a way to work through his emotions. Early in the ordeal I thought that when and if his wife did ever wake up, she would have a record of the depth of love and emotions that her husband felt for her that is unlike anything I have ever shared with anyone.

I believe this account is a love story for the ages. I don't feel skeevy anymore. I feel lucky to have read it. Good luck, AT. Take care of yourself and your family.