A few months ago, I wrote a blog entitled “My Foray Into Facebook”.

In that blog, I mentioned that I had become reacquainted with a friend from high school back in the states named “Dave”. As a result of a genetic disorder, Dave had become totally deaf in his twenties and had recently been fitted with cochlear implants. He was experiencing a new lease on life. I looked forward to Dave’s almost weekly e-mails. He had a wicked sense of humour and was a very good writer. He was generous with his time and he helped me to reconnect with a lot of other people as he acted as a sort of a hub. He often wrote things that would make me think. A lot of people I know would post comments to things he wrote.

Sadly, I learned this past weekend that Dave had died unexpectedly. He was home alone and he choked to death. The gruesomeness of this atrocity is surreal. No one ever deserves to die like that, and in his case it seems patently unfair since he was just getting back his land legs following some rough seas that life had thrown his way.

His last post on his Facebook site was at 9:48 p.m. on Saturday and you can tell from his Facebook Profile that he probably had been corresponding several people over the course of the early evening. Most of his posts were Obama-related as he really enjoyed his recent speech at the Washington Press Core dinner, but he had also uploaded some photos from his nephew’s recent confirmation.

I learned of his passing through another friend from high school, and over the past few days have been reading the many posts from friends back home about their experience reconnecting with him. It seems all of us were touched by Dave and he will be sorely missed. The general consensus is that there aren’t enough nice people like him.

I don’t know what will happen to his Facebook site. I’d be curious if anyone know what happens to a personal e-mail address or a Facebook account when a person dies. Let’s assume that no one knows his password. Does that mean he will forever be frozen in time? Quite frankly that’s a little creepy for me.

Perhaps when we are all doing our “planning” for the inevitable we should account for such things. If Dave would’ve thought of it, he would have added “leave password with wife so that account can be closed” on the same list as “don’t leave the house without clean underwear”.