Ronni Bennet

The original elder blogger, Ronni Bennett, died on Friday night.  The world is a lesser place since then.

When The Burrow began in 2009,  I was a trapeze artist without a net.  I was putting my real self out into the real world with no real idea of what I was doing.  Dooce, Little Cuter's favorite blogger at the time, set out some rules that seemed reasonable; don't write about work came from being fired after doing just that.

Though Big Cuter said you are way hipper than you think you are, Mom, I couldn't believe that anyone was interested in what I had to say.

Then I found Time Goes By.  Written by a Jewish girl who loved living in Greenwich Village until she was priced out and forced to move, the blog took a personal look at growing older.  Mixing life experiences with deep research and a wicked sense of humor, she separated the sense from the nonsense.

Using her skills as a television producer, she gathered facts and presented them in a most appealing way.  She called bs when it was necessary.  She shared her readers' own written works on a page in her blog.  

The comments were as important as the posts.  She read them and sometimes she'd quote you - I still get a shiver when I remember the time an Ashleigh Burroughs comment appeared in Ronnie Bennett's next post.  More important, they were a way into a self-selected group of readers, many of whose blogs I follow and many of whom have followed me here.

We are all bereft. 

She was a model of self-sufficiency up to the end, living alone, supported by hospice, writing posts until she died, on her own terms.  After sharing the news, the new caretaker of our community wrote this:

I will leave you with knowing that she was ready. Just before she died, she said, "When you get here, it is really nice. I am not afraid."

As always, showing us the way.

May her memory be a blessing to us all.