Thomas Blanchard was an online friend.
We traded watercolors, pens, and ink, and chatted on two platforms.

He knew I wanted this PenBBS and it was no longer available,
and was going to sell his to me because that was who he was…
He wanted to make people happy!
Oddly, he stopped answering me mid-conversation on IG.
It was unlike him, and I texted him,
and finally he answered me saying he’d been having medical issues.

Next thing I heard he died.

That was upsetting.  Our online friends can be dear to us and
he was one of those people I looked for, missed, and cared about.

Then I heard he committed suicide.

Oh.

I wished I’d known he was heading there.
Social media is a “happy” place, but maybe if there was a bit more reality
he’d still be with us… or maybe he was diagnosed with
something with which he could not live.
People tell someone, give people a chance to help you….

This isn’t his pen, but one exactly like it.
Another pen-person on IG read my note to his family
when they were selling his pens at an East Coast show.
His family doesn’t understand crazy artists or sentimental tools or any of that,
and so didn’t think too much about those of us who wrote to them.
Wendy offered this to me at a ridiculously low price.
I think of him (and her kindness) every time I use it,
It is filled with Robert Oster True Blue ink.  Fitting; Tom said he loved blue paint,
and gifted me with my first M.Graham blue.

Do you have a memory about an object
most people would not even think about?

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