Weblogsky: John Slatin

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John Slatin

John Slatin, probably the global authority on web accessibility and a truly wonderful guy, passed away last Tuesday. He'd battled leukemia for the last three years. I had worked with John on a project a few years ago, and we crossed paths many times since. I regret that I didn't get to know him better.

One of John's last posts to his blog had this poem:

It's hard to believe that so much love lived and still lives in these letters: we asked you to send us a hundred and 30 letters, saying anything at all, so we'd have something to open while we were in hospital. We never for a moment dreamt what we would get: letters sent, letters hand-delivered, CDs, cities in boxes like so many Joseph Cornell sculptures, cards, stories, thoughts, anecdotes from years ago and far away, all magic all the time, from people I've met recently, people I’ve known what seems like for ever-- at least since graduate school, even a few well before that. You probably didn't know or maybe some of you did, what those letters, opened one, or two, sometimes three or four at a time, would and could do for us. We're under no illusion that we can ever repay that.
But we can acknowledge what you gave us,
what you give us every moment still:
your hearts, our hearts, all aflutter , all
beating, beating, beating strong:
waiting with us each day for doctors to come
and give us the news, whether or not there was news
to give, whether or not they were the same doctors as yesterday. People came and visited, came and went, and each day we opened one or two or three or sometimes four
envelopes, numbered envelopes, brightly colored,
some having arrived by mail, some
that Diane put there after the fact
so we wouldn't be able to tell where they were from. That was a year and a half ago. Sometimes it seems like hard...

I forget where I was. Not that it really matters. In the middle of the night I got to know some of the techs.
They came, they said, to take my vitals,
as if I were Prometheus and they were vultures, or Eagles, or harpies, or
med techs, which is what they were -- mostly women of color, about my age though they seemed much older, working in the middle
of the night. They were my friends.
Mornings, the doctors came.
And always there was Anna, always always Anna, always my warrior-fairy, my love,
my queen. And now she lies on the floor with Dillon the dog,
and she is awake and laughing, with the fire in the fireplace
after a day of taking me from doctor to doctor. This is now, and that was then: there are still letters
to open.