The horror.

Mystery woman no more.

I don't know how to write what I'm writing. My brain is numb, body tense, ears screaming. For two hours I've been unable to reflexively breathe. Some of you will find this post upsetting, especially if you worked at Agency.com in NYC between 2000 & 2002. For others it's -- what? -- a warning, a harrowing observation, a flailing plea for mercy from the technological world we've created and inhabit and participate in, a world that's never before existed, a world that allows for a past event to bubble up amid pallid waters and explode without warning, bathing everything in raw, blinding horror.

Chronologically:

I returned to dreaded Facebook the other day to learn about family and friends in Fiji affected by Cyclone Winston. Today I found more photos and video from northern sections I'm familiar with, most especially Savusavu, where Aradhna and I stayed a magnificent three days with two of the loveliest cottage owners you could ever meet. Terrible damage. I've heard from most of the people we care about throughout Fiji but am waiting on others.

While briefly skimming FB's lean offerings I noticed that an old friend and colleague had wished another old friend and colleague a happy birthday. We'd all worked together at Agency.com when Silicon Alley was a pioneering force in lower Manhattan and well-established companies were foolishly dumping cash on web shops like ours to keep them relevant in a harrowing 'new digital age'. My home office was in Woodbridge, NJ but there weren't many copywriters on the company-wide payroll so I got farmed out to other offices as-needed. Turned out I was needed in the Lower Manhattan office more than any other -- luckily so, as its Exchange Place environs were stuffed with talented men and women (as well as a few clothes horses, being NYC) with an ocean of skills that stretched far beyond the myopic definition of 'digital' in 2016.

I worked with two or three teams on several high-visibility projects. Met some of the brightest people I've ever known, people I'm lucky to have stayed connected with via social media. Then there are others who've drifted away.

A woman named Patricia Graham was a drifter.

Patricia was an administrative assistant who wanted to write. I don't remember exactly how much I mentored her but recall encouraging her to show off her talents -- advertising copywriting is far from rocket science -- and her being appreciative of that encouragement. She was sharp, funny, dry ... and very insular. Her laconic demeanor made you WANT to make her laugh. It was a challenge, and Patricia could flex a sullen vibe like a left hook, but when engaged the pretty brunette was a joy to have in the workplace. She helped me corral other copywriters around the US on one large job in particular, and I remember having drinks with her after work on at least two occasions. I had a girlfriend which made extra-curricular bonhomie taboo but I can't say I wouldn't have been interested otherwise.

We sympathised with each other's ungodly commutes into lower Manhattan but I liked my job and felt my potential was being tapped; Patricia didn't feel the same satisfaction and knew her talents were going to waste. I was working in the Boston office on a longterm project when the Woodbridge office got shuttered during the post-9/11 decimation of Silicon Alley and I lost touch with her, like I did with most ACOM colleagues.

Since this afternoon I've been trying to remember how we reconnected. It was before Zuckerberg's Frankenstein and my move to Australia, so it would have been around 2004-2005. She'd gotten a job as a copywriter, she was far from overjoyed but seemed pleased with her progress, and we threw out the usual well-meaning 'Hey we gotta meet up sometime blah blah blah ...' that end all such correspondences. I moved to Australia in May of 2006. According to Facebook Patricia and I connected on that bloated social networking carcass in February 2009. I know we engaged in a bit of banter but I have no memory of it and after today's horror have zero urge to read the words of our final conversation.

Today. Facebook automatically informed me it was Patricia's birthday. Noticed the former colleague mentioned above had written a short greeting on her timeline. I did the same: 'Happy b-day, mystery woman.' After it was posted on her timeline I noticed disturbing posts preceding it. One man with Patricia's last name wished he could give her a final birthday kiss. Another wished she could see Patricia one last time. Finally, another that pointed out Patricia's daughter would been eight years old on this date.

Patricia wasn't celebrating a birthday today. Patricia -- lovely, dependable but slightly muted Patricia -- was dead. As was a young daughter.

I immediately erased my post on her timeline and messaged the former colleague who'd posted the earlier greeting. Patricia was dead. So, apparently, was her daughter. Jesus fucking Christ. Patricia Graham was dead.

I then did what anyone born after 1960 has been programmed to do for at least the past 20 years: I googled Patricia's name, as well as the name of her daughter. Had they died in a car crash? Were they murdered? What the fuck? What in the actual FUCK?

What I discovered is something that I either should have known already or wish I didn't know now but that will forever be a beacon to the unspeakable horror that lurks with every keystroke, and that distant memories of a person once called 'friend' can confound and enrage and confuse and be twisted into an unrecognisable ghost from the past that becomes more real than the air galloping from paralysed lungs.

Two days after her birthday in 2011, Patricia Graham-Hawthorne drowned her four-year-old daughter Allison Hawthorne in one of the bathrooms of their home in the 'affluent' community of Bernardsville, NJ before drinking paint thinner and slashing her wrists and slipping beneath the water of the same bathtub in which she'd murdered her daughter. Her husband and Allison's father, Robert Hawthorne, discovered the scene later that night.

Police ruled it a murder-suicide.