Birth, Death, and the Inadequate Social Media.

My friend Brittany recently had a baby.  Jason was born several weeks early, and for a while it didn't seem he was going to make it.  Brittany was making several anguished Facebook posts about her suffering child, and so many of her friends and family were offering words of support and encouragement.  I was not one of them.  I wanted to be, but I just wasn't.
    This past Saturday night, my friend Michael came home from an outing with friends and found that his boyfriend, also named Jason, had died.  From the second hand information I got from a friend of ours, and a few Facebook posts, we learned that Michael had found Jason wrapped in a blanket on the couch where he had been napping.  Michael is quite devastated.  Again, there was an outpouring of support and condolences from so many friends on Facebook.  I was not one of them.
 Actually, that's not entirely true.  But my attempt looked, at least to me, terribly tacky.  In fact, I have fears that this blog post may make me look terribly tacky because I can't seem to shake the idea that I'm making their pain all about me.
    The problem is that I can't seem to find words when someone I care about is going through pain.  I'm ashamed of that.  I really want to be there for them, but by "be there" I mean actually with them so I can touch them, hug them, hold their hand.  I still probably won't have anything to say, but I'm a good listener, and I have comforting shoulders.  Electronic media just seems so inadequate, and that's exacerbated by my own lack of meaningful verbal expression.
    Michael was in chat last night on Facebook.  I wanted to let him know I was thinking about him, so I found a crying depressed looking emoticon and sent it to him as a message.  When I posted it, it was huge.  When you look at them in the menu, they're about the size of  a 12pt font.  This was like 72 or bigger.  It was awful.  When they're small, you can't see how cheesy they really are.
    I don't know when I'll see Brittany again.  I'll probably see Michael at the funeral.  Till then, I'm wishing my arms could reach out through my computer to say "I love you, and I'm here for you.  And I wish I could make the pain go away."