I used to have a younger brother named Jed. He drowned in a boating accident in the Strait of Juan de Fuca when I was 14 and he was 12. A Labor Day statistic.
To this day, anything Labor Day-ish creeps me out: the smell of barbecuing salmon, life preservers, Interstate traffic reports from the local radio Traffic Copter, Monday holidays. But here’s a secret: My e-mail password is hellojed. So I think about him every day. He was way better with computers than I was. He was way nerdier than me.
[…]
It was then that she asked me, in a lowered tone, „Who’s Jed?“
She had seen me keyboard in my password – like HAL from 2001.
And so I closed the door and told her about Jed, and you know, I was glad I was able to tell someone at last.