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Farrah Fawcett lost her long battle with rectal cancer this week, sadly dying at the age of 62. Farrah and her hair, and lovely smile were the material of dreams for a generation of men and women.

She was perhaps best known for her role as Jill in Charlie’s Angels, but she managed to gain critical and popular acclaim on stage and in tv movies through her career. Though she was always cheerful and full of smiles, her personal life was a struggle. She’ll be missed.

Ed McMahon of “Heeeere’s Johnny” fame also passed away. He was the most famous sidekick in television working beside Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show for decades. He played the straight man to Johnny’s jokes. He represented the ‘ordinary guy’ to a generation of television veiwers.

Both will be missed by their fans and peers.

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My good friend Hugh lost his dad almost 30 years ago in a terrible accident. Father’s day has always been a strange one for him. He was barely 10 when he lost his dad, old enough to have some memories but now it’s been so long that he doesn’t really know what are his memories and what are those of his 5 older siblings.

The family still gathers on Father’s Day though. His mom brings out the photo albums and everyone looks at them. Their tradition is a lovely one for as each person gets to hold the album, he or she, tells about a moment in the past year that they think their father would have been proudest of.

The first time I heard about this it made me stop and think. How beautiful, how loving, and what a wonderful way to keep the memory alive. Hugh thought he’d start a new tradition this year. He borrowed the albums, and scanned the photos. He uploaded them and created an online tribute to his Dad. This year he is going to project the photo slideshow as each of them talks about their accomplishments. He thinks his mom will like that.

Happy Father’s Day to all of you who are Fathers. Enjoy your day, enjoy your family.

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Father’s day is coming, and I hope you can all share your memories of your dad, and what he has meant to you. Do it in person, online, or over the phone. He’ll love it. On Respectance many of our members have created beautiful online tributes to their fathers. Some are private, most aren’t. All are filled with love.

Fathers usually are the foundation of a family. They are the cornerstone that everything is built on. Slow to anger, and hard to please. Their few words can hold so much power over a child. They are the voice of reason when mothers are pushed to breaking.

I watch my friend father his child and it fills me with wonder. He is patient and loving. Firm and resolute.

What do you remember about your childhood, and your dad?

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Many of our members noticed service interruptions on Monday. We hate making scheduled maintenance breaks too often, so we saved up a huge load of changes and made them at once. Upgrades were made to hardware and software alike, with some subtle and not so subtle results. Our tech team, Marcin and his crew, worked incredibly hard to pull off a successful event. Thanks guys.

What you may notice on your side is that the home page has changed a bit. The upload module for photos and videos has been completely redone and is much more streamlined. I think you’ll find it a lot easier to use than the old one. Most importantly though, before we made our changes we polled our most active users on a variety of aspects of the site and found that the majority agreed on one point. Members would rather pay for sponsoring a tribute than see ads popping up. So the biggest change that you will notice is that we’ve done away with all the advertising on the site.

Explore the site, all the changes, and let us know what you think. You can leave your comments here, or you can send them to support(at)respectance(dot)com.

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New traditions abound on the internet. Respectance is one, another I’ve noticed that more and more dying people are blogging. Their blogs are often a poignant snapshot of what’s really important in life. The ‘good’ blogs aren’t good because of the quality of writing, or technical expertise. They are good because of the heart breaking content.

What do people find important to talk about when they are dying? It seems many of them struggle with the question of faith and afterlife. Many people wander from their faith in mid life, only to discover that it is important when they contemplate dying. My friend the minister says that on a death bed there are no agnostics. I suspect he is right.

Some of them write about the simple pleasures of their lives, their children, their grandchildren, and their families. Others try to conquer the troubles of the world trying to decide why life is in fact so unfair. Some accept their fate with resignation, some charge full steam ahead dying as passionately as they lived.

We have a couple of members that are dying and have begun their own tributes to themselves. They made them ‘private’ and have left the activation instructions with their loved ones for after death. I like this. It’s a logical step in the pre-planning process.

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