Farewell To Missy
Dateline: 06/16/97 - Weekly feature from your Guide To Personal Web Pages
It took a second for the words to sink in. I was catching up on Cory Glen's online diary, when I came across the entry for June 8. It read:
I ought to give you some background. In April I wrote a feature about Missy and her extraordinary online journal called "A Journey Through Illness."
Begun in November of 1996, the journal chronicles her battle against several life-threatening diseases and concludes on the day of her death, June 6. It tells of the courage and humor it takes to live as someone "lingering between life and death." It moved many. Indeed, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people with homepages placed a graphic of a candle on their pages in Missy's name, an amazing show of solidarity behind one person with no cause or agenda.
Her last entry was something she composed near the end and asked her family to post on the day of her death. It reads, in part:
I was not stronger than anyone, did not have harder problems than some of you, no braver, and certainly no Angel. I just happened to reach out and there you all were uplifting me by a cyber world of friends from all nations, of all races and all religions, each giving me bits of their own strength and courage. All courage you say you saw in me, came from you.
Some other pages about Missy's death:
Missy's last regular diary entries in June
A Tribute To Missy (this page also contains links to other tributes)
Coda 7/28/97: Missy's diary has been removed from the Web. With the disappearance of her words, the loss is complete.
