facebook can be useful sometimes

Today, I regret to inform this blog's two invisible readers that my Facebook friend, a different Ryan that the one mentioned in my first post, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Eerily, a post I began writing yesterday was titled 'tumor.'

For as short of a time that Ryan was actually part of my day-to-day life at a job that I quit four years ago, I am extremely saddened by this news. We made a few movies together, back in those days...

Ryan is the rare type of person that doesn't drink coffee. His heart is a beacon, and from it emanates a natural light that powers his radiant smile. The rare times he would get frustrated at work he would laugh it all away. He has many types of laughs: a satisfying laugh, an approving laugh, a burst of laughter. And they were all genuine. (As an studied observer of cringe I just know when laughter is of the fake, affirmative kind.) If Ryan didn't get a joke, his eyes and chuckle would betray his suspicions. (Sometimes also the reaction I was hoping to get with my off-color, "intentionally" unfunny joke.) Ryan was the perfect audience for my conversational skill set, and he could entertain me just the same.

His girlfriend Stephanie is a princess spoiled useless. She is a theatrical novice/amateur with more tit than talent, and no work ethic beyond an insatiable urge to be the center of everyone's attention. We get along too well, and have too much in common besides all the politics--she thinks I am agnostic. Our conversations run so smoothly, and I know so much of why she thinks the way she does that I  moonlight as her washed-up uncle. Or washed-up older brother.

Somehow, they compliment each other. They both make movies together, cosplay together and aspire to rise from the dregs of the suburbs to the halls of convention centers. Ryan with the laughs and Stephanie with the looks. Stephanie wishes her parents were dead, while Ryan wishes his parents were still alive. (Both of them died from cancer within 6 years of each other, and before Ryan turned 23 years old.)

My judgements aside--for now--the love and support she has shown him, though normally too ostentatious for my taste, is completely appropriate here. Ryan needs all of the love and prayers that he can get right now. The tumor is resting over the left half of his brain. Ryan is still walking, talking, acting like his normal self, though he has completely stopped smiling. The doctors are perplexed, and have him staying in hospice indefinitely for observation.

Stephanie hasn't left his side, and overshared the hospital he is staying, his room number, and visiting hours: 24/7. Because of the medium of Facebook and the message of Stephanie I can go see my friends at a time when they need my love and prayers more than ever. Only in sharing tragically personal news is Facebook useful.

There is hope for Ryan, like there was hope for Dean before him, and for Chris S before him. He will have to lose all thirty inches of his hair to make space on his skull for the surgeons.

Thinking back on another Chris that Ryan and I worked with four years ago....a Chris that never used FaceBook.....had he been diagnosed with an illness, a brain tumor, I wouldn't know about it. And he wouldn't know about me if I'd suffered a similar fate. One would never know about a once close friend's passing had it not been for Facebook....

All social media needs a niche, and Facebook is at its best when it bears the worst.