Like many of the people she helped, I didn’t know Uschi Johnson personally. We corresponded through email about the Neighbors From Hell message board, which she asked me to allow her to run a few years back. My saying yes was among my better decisions.
It’s a frightening thing to learn there’s something wrong with your body, that you’re in grave danger. Uschi, known by some as Casey, and known by most NFH board members by her screen name Fesser, continued to help NFH victims with their problems, well after hearing she had cancer. Even in her final days, weakened and impoverished by the disease, she was actively moderating the board and helping others. She knew the system had failed them, and felt strongly that she would not, as long as she could.
I didn’t know she was terminal, and I didn’t know the end was near. We communicated mostly about board management. Coming through her emails was consistently an energetic, upbeat attitude. She kept her humor and her edge in her posts, which I monitor from time to time as the board’s owner and author of the book on the subject. I hesitated to announce the news of her passing until I had a confirmation more official than word I received via email from a friend of hers. But after emailing Uschi and leaving voicemail, and not hearing back, I sadly had all the confirmation I needed.
Losing a friend or other loved one has always been difficult. In today’s world we make and keep friends over the Internet – people we never meet in person, but who we come to know and care for as though they’re our next-door neighbors (the good kind of next-door neighbors, of course). We find the pain of losing them is no different from losing people we know in person and see regularly.
Uschi’s friendship to the global NFH board community was as genuine as the traditional concept of good neighbors who live beside one another. Following my announcement of her dying, people posted memories and words of gratitude. Uschi spoke with some by phone about their neighbor problems, and with everyone through the boards and via email and private-messaging. Her caring always came through.
She was the empathetic, non-selfish, fair-minded friend we all wish to have as our next-door neighbor, and we’re all lucky to have had her as our electronic community neighbor.
Uschi was 42. The world has lost a great neighbor.
- BB
