sleeping — at his mother’s bedside, and how he and his beloved mum spent their final hours together. And, as the hours passed and his mother’s
condition worsened, Scott’s tweets became more poignant, gentle and heart-breaking. In the end he announced her death with the
tweet: “The heavens over Chicago have opened and Patricia Lyons Simon Newman has stepped onstage.” It was a tender, lyrical and very public way of
saying goodbye which led his followers – the vast majority perfect strangers – to reveal that he had made them burst into tears and reflect on their own experience with death. In an interview for This Week on American
television Scott explained it as a way of “honoring her.” He said: “I just thought there was something
in there that needed to be shared. I would sit there at her bedside, I would hold her hand, things would occur to me. And it was also a way of me taking notes. It was also a way of me keeping this experience.” “Dying is really the one universal experience.
It’s something we’re all going to have,” he added. Despite the fact that Scott, and his followers,
obviously found the experience cathartic, critics have argued that he should have spent the precious final hours of his mother’s life engaged with her, instead of tapping out messages to strangers on his Blackberry. But the online community, which is so often dismissed for being banal, embraced Scott’s grief in a way we rarely see play out in public. So will more and more people tweet from hospital rooms? It’s possible. It’s already common on Facebook, where people often announce that a loved one is in the hospital or has died. While some have bemoaned this, it doesn’t
feel morbid or inappropriate to me. It’s our modern equivalent of the ringing of church bells in the town square, or placing a notice in the local newspaper. And it reminds us to think about the choices
we make, the pleasures we take or forget to take in our own daily lives. These three tweets from Scott Simon, with messages direct from his mother, showed all of us how to live. He wrote: “I think she wants me to pass along
a couple of pieces of advice, ASAP. One: reach out to someone who seems lonely today. “And: listen to people in their 80’s. They have looked across the street at death for a decade. They know what’s vital. “Oh, and: Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for
anyone to realize. It goes too quickly.” Farewell Magazine
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