A new task for friends of Uma: A Statement of HOPE

Okay, this is really freaking strange. I woke up this morning thinking about Uma (okay, that’s not the strange part, the strange part is coming—wait for it) and I was thinking that it’s been a few days since I’ve assigned a “task” for people to do, to keep thoughts of Uma out in the ether.

So I decided, okay, we need a new task today. But what should it be? And then I remembered something that Uma wrote on her MySpace page a while back. I don’t know why it popped into my head today—I haven’t read her MySpace “blog” in months—but this particular post just popped into my head.

The subject line of her post was: “perhaps some goals, grace and love....”

And then the body of her post read as follows:

here's the story:

two fellas started this so that you could write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. we've all had to do them in high school and college. it's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later. FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. we strive for accuracy.

http://www.futureme.org/

So, I was lying in bed, and I remembered this post, and I thought: that’s a great freaking idea. Let’s all send emails to Future Uma today! Because every time one of us sends an email to Future Uma it will be like we’re telling the universe: “Look, Universe, I believe that Uma’s going to continue to recover as beautifully as she’s been recovering and I believe that she is going to come out of this with all of her Uma-ness intact, and I know with all of my heart that one day Uma is going to be sitting down at her computer, reading emails. And I’m sending this email to that Future Uma. And for that Future Uma, thoughts of hospitals and rehab centers and brain aneurysms—that will all feel like a funny dream. It will all be something that Past Uma dealt with and kicked in the fucking ass. And it’ll be nice to remind Future Uma of all of the love that helped Past Uma get through that whole damned brain aneurysm ordeal. So that’s why I’m not sending an email to Present Uma’s dormant email box. That’s why I’m sending it to Future Uma, as a Statement of HOPE. To let her know that I knew she was going to get through this, that I had the faith that this was an email Future Uma would someday receive.”

So that’s the task I am humbly asking you to complete today. Write an email to Future Uma at www.futureme.org, and have them send it to: nithipal@hotmail.com on whichever future date you desire. (Remember, if you want to make it a birthday wish, her birthday is September 20th—but pick whatever future date you want her to get your message on, whatever date you find significant.) Even if you don’t know Uma but have been following her progress, it would be great if you could put your own little statement of HOPE out there into the inter-ether.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you the freaking strange part. So…I went to “copy and paste” Uma’s post about the www.futureme.org website and just as I was about to close the internet explorer window, I glanced up and noticed the date that Uma had posted her MySpace message about www.futureme.org. She posted it on March 27th, 2006—exactly ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. And that’s gotta be more than just some random coincidence, right? I mean, that’s too weird to just be a coincidence. I dunno.

Anyway, send Future Uma an email! (and again: her email address is nithipal@hotmail.com)

(and feel free to repost this and ask others to send Future Uma an email!)