Gone To The Hidden Side of a Leaf

"Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf." Toni Morrison

That quote is the source of Dewey's blog name: The Hidden Side of a Leaf. Dewey of the 24-hour-read-a-thon? of Weekly Geeks?

I'm soooooo sad. It's been hours since I learned that the book blogosphere has lost one of it's shining stars and I'm still reeling. I have been a regular, tho not daily, reader since signing up for the Oct 2007 read-a-thon at Dewey's The Hidden Side of a Leaf. I tend to read the blogs I follow in chunks of a week to a month's worth of posts. For prolific bloggers like Dewey it tended to once a week.

After she started Weekly Geeks I checked in each weekend and caught up. Until mid November when a confluence of NaNo angst, a nasty cold and news of my 76 yr mother breaking her hip in a fall and suffering a stroke from a blood clot post surgery brought most of my blog reading to a halt. I was planning to check in with WG last week but was down with another cold (even minor illness further compromises my vision) so I waited.

This morning I had gone to check on how the contest was going at FieldReport, a writer's community which I blogged about after Dewey introduced it on her blog a few months ago, and found the site down and the announcement on the difficulties there with the explanation that one of their programmer's wives had died and I immediately thought NOT DEWEY! NO! and headed for my bookmark. So that's how I found out and why not until two weeks after her husband posted the announcement on her blog.

Dewey was so generous. She was a blessing to my life this past year. I have rarely encountered in my 'real' life anyone whose love of books and story matches mine. (I married the first male one I encountered.) Dewey was one of the few online book blogger's whose passion for reading easily matched and likely surpassed my own and through the community she developed I 'met' several more.

Do any of you have any idea what it means to have spent decades surrounded by those who thought you too weird for words and then to one day find yourself in a place where there's not one, not two, not just a few but dozens and dozens of like-hearted people?

That's what it was like for me when I discovered the book and writing blogs four years ago.

Dewey's The Hidden Side of a Leaf was one of the ultra rare blogs which seemed to glow with the very soul of its owner. Her blog became my portal to the book blogosphere and it so outshone all the rest that none comes immediately to mind as a replacement.

I may not have known her real name but I felt as though I knew her.

And, yes, I loved her.

If that's too weird for words, so be it.