I wish I'd known for true

Flight. Photo taken April 2019 I got a message from facebook today that it was my friend Sue's birthday. Maybe I'd want to wish her many happy returns of the day? If only. The message, innocuous and obviously impersonal, left me bereft.
I'd never met Sue. Like so many of my writer 'friends', I knew her only online. She and I had been members of the same online writing community years ago. We got closer, writing wise at least, when we did a writing project together. It was Sue's idea--let's take a single premise, sketch out a couple of characters, and throw in a few odd facts and then retreat to our garrets. We'll each come up with a novella length story. Three of us took up her challenge. My take led to "The Whisper of Time" a novella-length story I never would have written but for Sue's bright idea. Sue wrote a horror story, Heway House, which was published after she developed it into a full length novel.   We'd kept in touch since then, each of us writing and publishing with small publishers.
There are quite a few people from what many of us now call 'the old place' that I would call online friends. They've often helped me along the way of my writing journey. Like real friends, they offer support for my work as I offer support for theirs. We've share some of our joys and sorrows over the years, too. But the truth is I don't really know them. They tell me, and others, only what they want known. I'm not being critical here, I do the same. Real, in deep personal stuff is often too raw to be shared online. I'm lucky to have a great group of real life friends and a very supportive husband for the deep dives. Online, you can never know the heights of someone's joy, or the depths of their personal despair.
​A few weeks ago, Sue took her own life.  I remember her, and will always remember her, as a kind and gentle spirit, always ready with an encouraging word, always willing to help out her fellow writers in any way she could. And, even though I never knew her, not truly, not really, she leaves an empty space behind--one of the candles that lights the way down my path has been extinguished.  I wish I'd known her better.  I wish I could have been a better friend, a real life friend. Maybe it would have changed nothing.  But I wish for it, none the less.