WHEN my daughter was little, she used to ask me my favorite color. I was a grownup, and could only supply a grownup’s answer: “I love the way light looks in late afternoon,” I might say. Or, “Red and black can make powerful statements in graphic design.” Grownups don’t have favorite colors. But children do.
Rebecca Meyer had a favorite color. It was purple. A color that might be expressed in the hexadecimal language of web design as #663399.
As many of you know, Eric and Kat Meyer lost their daughter Rebecca to cancer on Saturday. Rebecca Alison Meyer was a ray of light. She was six years, eleven and a half hours old when she died.
Some of us know Eric through his two decades of work on behalf of web development and web standards. Some of us know Eric and Kat as friends. Some of us only know of the Meyerses because of Rebecca’s story, as her parents courageously and with unyielding clarity shared it over the internet day after day during the past year.
All the caring and all the medicine, all the prayers and all the love from friends and strangers, could not stop this cancer from claiming this child. Caught between horror and hope, all of us watched as the Meyer family fought to save their beautiful middle child’s life. They did everything that could be done to save Rebecca. Then they did more.
Now it’s time to do something for them. Some little, heartbreakingly inadequate thing for a girl who got dragged into a fight no one could win, and stayed a pure, brave spirit to the end.
Rebecca will be buried this Thursday, 12 June. On that day, let us celebrate Rebecca by calling the internet’s attention to her. In the words of Matt Robin, who came up with the idea, “let’s get #663399Becca trending for Thursday 12th.”
It’s so easy to do, there’s no reason not to. Go to Twitter on 12 June and post the hashtag #663399Becca along with any additional words or pictures you feel moved to share. Or just share the hashtag. It will not be enough. Nothing will ever be enough. But it will be something.
(The family requests that charitable donations be made in Rebecca’s name to the Philadelphia Ronald McDonald House or the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.)
