Wednesday, March 13, 2024

.. and the first hit was an obituary. She was dead.

I managed to pull her old site out of the wayback machine, and got to work restoring old broken links and tracking down the missing Simpsons icon pack. It was painstaking, awful knife-work in HTML. Google Sites had some kind of built-in CMS for maintaining pages with tons of JavaScript and other. All links were absolute and hardcoded, and nothing worked.

As more and more of the homepages became functional I began to read about Jeanette. Her love of cooking and baking - especially sweet stuff! Her passion for gaming and science fiction. Her adoration of her long-deceased cat Garfield, who had his own memorial page. A picture of her began to emerge: this is someone I would have liked to know. A Simpsons geek. A kind person. Someone who liked to laugh, and laugh often. A Mac user so passionate about her computer that she put a "Made With Macintosh" spinning GIF on every page. A kitty lover. A goofball.

But what lanced me through the heart was this single paragraph:

I'm 48, female, shy about relationships, and tired of being alone. I want to find my gamer guy! I'm intelligent, witty, clever, very loyal and honest. I'm artistic and creative and interested in all the things I just listed, and I want to find my soulmate out there. I don't judge a book by its cover; I'm attracted to what's inside. If you're intelligent, can converse as equals, share similar interests, and are prepared to treat me like a lady, then send me an email and let's talk.

Jeanette died a few years after posting that Wanted ad on her homepage. She was only 53 years old.

Tired of being alone.

For days I choked back tears wondering if Jeanette had ever found that special person to fulfill that lonely place in her heart. I've felt that kind of loneliness before. I've been alone and broken-up-with and separated and divorced. It hurts. Even when you think you're finally happy being alone with yourself, you still feel that tug of something missing.

But I've never felt that loneliness for years or decades.

When I started archiving Jeanette's homepage it was because I thought the world was missing some world-class 32x32 pixel Simpsons icons.

But when I finished archiving her homepage, it was archived as a memorial for Jeanette herself. She was a special person, someone that I did not know. Someone that I wished I had. Perhaps this tiny fragment of her life will remind others to seek out that special person in your life.

Trust me. They exist. They're weird, like you.

And they're worth it.