Aloe & Moss

We’ve spent this Christmas opening a lot of family google docs. It’s really a much easier way to share information rather than try to send a million emails back and forth. Plus, some people like to send non-essential information and then no one really knows what’s up.

Google docs cuts that business out. One doc. Put essential information next to your name. Bam. Parties are organized. Food is provided. Good times are had by all.

Late last week my brother called me in a panic (so much a sense of urgency that I didn’t recognize his voice on the phone). Z was asking permission to get into the google doc he’d just started for his family. None of us knew he’d started it, it wasn’t published, but there was a little pink notification that Z’s email was requesting permission to edit the google doc.

He found out later something weird happened in that my dad was doing something and something else happened and then yahoo existed and it automatically logged back into Z’s email on my dad’s computer and then google docs happened and they got together and notifications emerged.

I don’t know… techy-techy things happened.

For my brother, though, it was there in blazing pink. Z wanted in on his spreadsheet.

I called it a wink from heaven.

Shortly after Z passed and everyone was back at their homes, I had a couple of days to myself before I went back to work. I sat on the couch and googled “Why did my daughter die?”. I knew nothing would happen, there is no magic website that will give me answers to the universe. I knew I wasn’t going to get a resolution, but I needed to ask a third party this question and I needed to have that 3^rd party answer me without giving me a stupid affirmation about God’s plan and time and healing. I wanted someone to tell me something that made sense.

Obviously, I got back nonsense.

Google doesn’t know why Z died or why Joe died or why anything bad happens to anyone. Google is an electric business of switches and fibers (a series of tubes??) organized to give us information that we can use in whatever way we’d like.

Google won’t give me the answers I’m looking for. Google’s answers won’t make my soul happy, nor the grief abate. Google can help me with math, it can not make crisis of the heart subside.

But still, I wonder how many people have sat at their phone or computer looking for the same resolution I did. How many people with tear-stained, flushed cheeks tried to get the answers they needed from something that doesn’t have the capacity to understand what that means. I’m certain I’m not alone in painful google searches, begging for relief and sanity.

What happened on that google doc for that brief second when everything seemed status quo was allow the electronic switching to speak straight to my brother’s heart. For a second he got to see her name pop up and request permission to enter his Christmas planning.

She’s part of Christmas planning.

Sometimes chaos aligns exactly right and what we need most appears.

Sometimes chaos gives you no answer at all and leaves you doing google searches for answers that will never make you whole.

Zero Stars. Do not recommend.