Yesterday morning I found out that a beloved member of our fandom, @dimples-of-discontent, passed away three months ago on August 13, 2021. Bex fought stage four triple negative breast cancer for almost three years, but on August 10, she was told she only had a month left to live and made the decision to move into hospice care. Sadly, time wasn’t on her side. I don’t think she got to do the things she wanted to do to prepare for her departure and my heart feels heavy at that.
I never told her but I checked in on her from time to time. I’d read her blog, @pitiless-achilles-wept, where she talked about her treatments to see if she was doing okay. We weren’t particularly close, but we bonded over our mutual enthusiasm for Destiel and the fact that one of my English professors turned out to be a good friend of hers who shipped Cockles, just like us! (She sent me screenshots and had me laughing that whole week.)
Bex was so open, genuine, and kind. She gave me her Twitter handle (I couldn’t follow her; I didn’t have Twitter!) even though it was tied to her real life and job. But she trusted me and was so welcoming and invited me into her life without a second thought. When I saw that she hadn’t posted in a while, it was this Twitter handle that came to mind and I went looking, to see how she was doing, and instead of her happy smiley face, I found her obituary.
She was loved by so many people. I found comments upon comments saying so as much, because of course how could they not! She was cheerful, a ball of light, smart, overflowing with empathy and understanding. Her curiosity and eagerness about everything she did was infectious and her determination to stay positive (but also realistic!) about her cancer diagnosis, was both courageous and inspiring.
It is so hard to believe that she’s really gone. Her posts still circulate on my dash. I still have her messages. Her voice is still out there, her words still being read, and it feels like any day now, she’ll pop back up on Tumblr, analyzing the latest episode of Supernatural, or Jensen and Misha’s suspicious movements at the most recent con. The fact that she won’t breaks my heart.
It’s unfair. Bex was just 37, too young, too wonderful, with too many more amazing things left to do. But I’m glad that in some ways, she’ll still be here with us, and even if there weren’t posts floating out there to remind us of her, I don’t think we could ever forget such a beautiful soul as hers.
