I feel like I'm the last person to learn about Anita's death. I visited her Web site to see if she had written anything about the 15th & Howell murder. (From the address, it looked like the building at that corner might be the building where she used to live; if it is, she would've mentioned it in her journal.) When I pulled up the page, there was Jack's last post; and as the words started making sense, the shock bloomed in my heart and started to burn. I hadn't known that her health had deteriorated so much.

It's funny when things hit you fast and deep and you realize there were more layers to a situation than you were aware of. Suddenly, I missed her. It's not like we would have ever been more than we were. But who she has been for me, although just a small part, somehow has been fundamental. In that moment of shock, the history of my life since the time that I met her appeared to me as an image of a full and many branched tree. She was a colorful, geometrical spot at its thick base, a place where roots found anchor and from which some future took shape. She is one of three who knew me first through this quasi-secret, genuine part of me; one of a few who did not discount it.

We corresponded and met in person only a handful of times. In 1997, when I began Up From Sloth, she was one of its first readers. Like others have written, she gave encouragement and helpful feedback on site design and usability. Importantly, she was sincerely interested in the content and the person. She e-mailed often with comments. I was living in Korea at the time, but when I visited Seattle, she was one of the first people I arranged to see. We met at Coastal Kitchen before one of her swing dance events. I think I'd brought her a gift, perhaps a Korean tea cup. Later, when I stayed in Seattle, she invited me to a couple of gatherings of online journalers, one with Lucy Huntzinger visiting and the other when Alan was in town. These two events changed things profoundly, changed who I loved and how I became.

When she and Jack married in 2002, they invited Andrew and me to the wedding. We told her then that we credited her with introducing us. We had known about each other online, but she had been supportive of each of us separately. Because of that, we had attended both of those gatherings and met in person.

I'm so glad to have known her, glad for all of us to have had each our individual moments on the wing of her interest and enthusiasm. And I feel for her family, how deep and weird the grief must be.