As best I understand it, she expected to die so she wrote a blog post which would be a farewell. Because she used WordPress, one of its features allows a blogger to write a post, and date it sometime in the future, and it would remain hidden until that date. I knew she was unwell - we exchanged SMS messages in the days leading up to the crucial time. I knew her life was falling apart. But unlike most who read her blog, I was more than just a reader of her website - I was a confidante, a sounding board, a support, a special project. I was her friend.

I was at work that day. I think it was a Thursday. And a former workmate who also read her blog daily called me. Had I seen her blog? No posts for a few days, and now her special post was being displayed. It was the sign to those who knew that her battle was over, and she was gone.
The post didn't say she was gone. It said she was leaving her current life behind, and leaving to go start a new one. Only, to those of us who'd spoken to her and had her read the final post to us months before, it was a sign to us. Her story had ended, and she'd died.
On the day, I could do little except advise my supervisor, and leave the office. I rang some of my friends, and told them, and I went to spend the afternoon with my girlfriend.

A week later though, I began to receive spam emails. Invites to join this website or other, supposedly from her. I wrote it off as just one of those things that happen in the unfathomable world of spam marketing. Especially when I learnt some of our mutual friends had received similar messages.
Something else in that first week made me suspicious. I don't recall now what it was, since it's now two and a half years in the past, but something made me curious enough to go hunting for a death notice in the newspaper. Following my father's death, I learnt that a death notice was a legal requirement. I searched both the tabloid, and the broadsheet newspapers. My search was never going to go well: I was uncertain of the date, only able to narrow it down to within 4-5 days; I was only able to search online, because I lived in another state; even worse, I knew she traveled under several different names, and was uncertain of the spelling. Not finding any death notice given those holes in the search was hardly surprising.

A couple of months went by, and there was a storm in blog-land.
Her final post got removed, put back, and a newer post was made by one of her "friends". I got an abusive email from the same friend for suggesting I had doubts about the official story. Someone archived her blog as it originally was, and posted it up afresh.

Almost two years went by.

Around Easter, I noticed someone was using her account in a chat website. I made an obscure reference to it on my own blog, so noone except her would know what I was referring to. She surfaced. I got a comment or two, and had an email chat. She told me things noone else could have. It was definitely her. I got a vague explanation - she'd been very sick, and when she recovered well enough to even know the blog post had been published, it was far too late. Better to leave it all in the past, and so she had.
In the last year sometime though, she'd started writing again, a new blog, a new online persona. And just like the first time, she gained readers, including some who had read her the first time around.
Just last week though, some of them began to realise the styles were similar, and did some detective work. Some digging revealed the links between then-her and now-her. And blog-land went into melt-down. She'd lied to them. She'd faked her death. She was the lowest lifeform imaginable. The righteous indignation of those who thought they deserved to be told two years ago that she'd not died was shouted from the rooftops.
But the world isn't that simple.
She'd not lied. Even though her intent when she wrote that post had been one thing, it also matched the scenario as it'd played out outside her control.
She'd not revived her old blog or told readers individually about the discrepancy because, they just didn't need to know. Those who have spoken to her since, and discussed it with her without the hysterical rantings of the blogerati have come away realising that she did what was right.

As for me, who was her friend then, I still am.
She taught me long ago friends love each other regardless of the flaws and chinks in their suits of armour. Nothing's changed.

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