1:35 a.m. A most heartbreaking bit of email appeared on the screen this evening, and I really wanted to erase it and make it go away. It's just too harsh. Too abrupt. Too final.

One of the really stalwart pillars of the online journalling community has lost his oldest son, suddenly ... and ...

... he has been a man of many words, but in one fell crash you realize how inadequate words really are. He has been keeping an online journal for a very long time now, and most significantly, he is one of the few people who has committed to writing every single day.

Before I started my own journey online, I read his. The word "accessible" was invented to describe Al's journal, Nova Notes. With just one entry -- any one -- you are a part of his noisy, busy household and you always leave his place wondering how he finds the time.

I've asked him that on more than one occasion: "How do you find the time?"

When I asked him to write a piece for this month's Metajournals, he found the time and even got it in on time, in spite of a complete computer rehaul involving hard disks and some unspeakable Microsoft programs.

He writes a journal entry every day. He completes a short story every week. He has a full-time job. He fools around with his wife. He always answers his email. Somehow, like many journallers I admire, he seems to be able to make time, to manufacture more of it than the rest of us have.

But no one can make time stand still. Or stop, or go backward. Time crashes its fist down, leaving a horrible cleft in the rock we stand on. The huge inhuman scythe swings and severs the very fabric of our lives ... and it only takes an instant and nothing is ever the same again.

I don't know Al personally. I came into this community via the conversations of the listservs, and he was the moderator of one of them. I thought of him as a distant father-figure, an authority, a somewhat humorless taskmaster. Although I am about ten years older than he is, I've always sort of looked up to him.

That's because he really is a quintessential father. His three boys have always mushed together in my mind into one noisy brawling wrastling TV-watching boy-ball. The fact that two are autistic and one is not is a tribute to the evenhanded way that Al seems to see his sons. They are boys first, boys second, just boys, always boys.

Al has asked that people not email him or call him for a while.

We have opened our homes and our hearts here on the web. There is a certain amount of risk in that. We have also looked into the homes of others, but only through the glass of the monitor. We cannot presume to be able to comfort or to soothe ... but if you believe in prayer, I think you should pray. For this family tonight.