Funeral of a Facebook friend.

I lost my best friend last week. Even though we had never met, or even spoken on the phone for that matter, Steve and I had been best Facebook buddies for the last four years. I remember we met when another friend "suggested" Steve to me as a friend. I sent him a friend request and he accepted. We hit it off immediately. We both liked the same pages. Every morning we raced to see who could poke who first. We were always the first to comment on each others statuses. We enjoyed chatting in the mornings before work while we drank our coffee's. Steve had gone through a rough patch in his life a couple years ago. His wife Julie had suddenly announced to him her rekindled love for her sixth grade crush Tommy Allen. They had recently reconnected on Facebook and started chatting and Tommy confessed he still had feelings for her and he was bored with his life and how it sucked. They secretly messaged each other back and forth and soon came up with a plan to leave their spouses and finally complete what they started when they were eleven. Julie quit her job, packed a suitcase and moved with Tommy to New Mexico, leaving my friend to fend for himself. Two months later he totaled his 1984 Chrysler K car when a drunk driver made a illegal U turn in front of him and forgot to turn. His insurance company actually wanted Steve to PAY THEM for the time it took the agent to go to his house to take a picture of the totaled car. After that he lost the house. His fourteen year old chihuahua paco, legally blind and deaf, escaped outside the front door as the people sent over from the bank were loading all his possessions in the Ryder truck. Paco didn't hear or see the chicken hawk swoop down from the sky and grab him. Before Steve could react the bird shot straight up into the sky and he never saw his little dog again. There wasn't a dry eye on his friend list when he posted his poem he wrote and dedicated to his beloved paco. I still remember some of the lines like "Oh paco, oh paco, why did you have to go". "Even though you couldn't hear me call, or see me down the hall, I always felt bad when you walked into the wall". And "On your last day you left me and soared through the air, even though you had hawk talons stuck in your fur and hair". Even after all the tragedy of that year Steve still inspired me and his other friends with all his shared inspirational posts. Post like "Don't let life get you down. Chose to be up and you will be." Or "Always be in your happy area and don't let mean people pull you out of it". I always shared those posts on my wall and was proud to call Steve my friend. We often private messaged each other and talked about getting together sometime to be able to finally meet but alias, fate had different plans. Last week there was a freak accident down at the Better Buy distribution warehouse where Steve worked. Witnesses reported seeing him texting on his smartphone while he was hauling a pallet of brand new fresh from China Taskinoglu Blu Ray DVD players backwards on his forklift. Somehow he veered of course and drove right out the open loading dock door. The back of the forklift hit the ground first and Steve was thrown onto the ground and the pallet of DVD players crashed down on him. First on the scene responders were shocked to see only his arm coming out from under the deadly pile of electronics. He still had his phone in his hand and the paramedics could only shake their heads when they discovered that he had been updating his facebook status. He had only got half of it typed and out of respect one of the paramedics hit send. Imagine my confusion when my phone vibrated at my job and I slipped it out to read what my best bud had said now. Of course, I didn't understand what had happened at that point. Steve's post merely read, "Bored out of my mind. I'm half tempted to just" and that was it. I commented first, like always. "To just what old buddy?" Soon others chimed in after Steve never answered, making a game out of posting something funny or crude. Todd said "To just confess I like guys LOL." Jake wrote "To go hunt Tommy Allen down in New Mexico and make him eat a shotgun sandwich?" Jenna Hopkins wrote "To call Jenna Hopkins and tell her I'm madly in love with her :) >>>3>>" We were all cracking up as each friend tried to out do the last one. Well we weren't laughing that night. Joe Hardin, one of Steve's coworkers, posted the news on Steve's wall that night. Joe had a uncanny ability to hack into peoples facebook accounts and post stupid comments while posing as them and he had had Steve's account info as well. Needless to say, we were all devastated. My best friend, whom I had never got to meet, was gone! Snuffed out by a pallet of Blu Rays. Soon all of Steve's friends were posting personal stories about the good times they had shared with him. Another friend of his created a page called In Remembrance of Steve. There we all reposted our favorite uploads and shares that Steve had posted over the years. Carl Collins, a old friend from his high school, created a event when the funeral was announced and sent out invites to everyone on Steve's friend list. I wanted to go real bad but with me being on the west coast and Steve living in Massachusetts it just wasn't possible to do so on such short notice. Still, I responded maybe just in case. Carl promised to take lots of pictures and even record the whole service with his iPhone and upload it all to his In Remembrance of Steve page. True to his word, he did. I watched the whole service that night. After the video I checked out Carls photo album he had put together. I met Steve's mom. His sister Karen. I finally saw a picture of his crazy uncle Phil. Uncle Phil didn't have a facebook page so no one really knew him. Some reps from Better Buy were there. Better Buy had picked up the whole tab for the funeral home and the service, probably more out of fear of a lawsuit then compassion for Steve, even though there were No Texting While Operating Forklift signs posted throughout the warehouse. They certainly spared no expense. The funeral home looked nice. A organist played soft music as the mourners filed in. They even payed for a luncheon immediately following the service that was catered by some group named Kathys Kountry Katering. Rest in peace my friend. I'm going to miss ya and I'm sorry we never got to meet.