However, I’m getting increasingly frustrated by public- or social media-based hand-wringing over tragedies or high-profile deaths. It’s important to verbalize grief, to not feel alone in the world, but it is so much more important to do something real with those emotions. If Steve is bound for heaven (if you believe in that, which I don’t), your tweets and facebook updates won’t speed his path or soothe the hearts of his three kids, wife and friends.

But what does help is doing something in the world, to advance the legacy of the person you’re mourning or the cause you’re fighting.

- Contribute your old Mac to a charity, school, local park, neighbor kid who doesn’t have one.
- Donate to a teacher’s project on DonorsChoose.org.
- Contribute to an organization that facilitates adoption, for those who choose this path (Steve was an adoptee; the novelist Mona Simpson is his birth sister)
- Contribute to a pancreatic cancer organization such as PCAN or the Lustgarten Foundation. Or Livestrong. Or Gilda’s Club, which supports those in the fight

Anything besides reposting, retweeting or being snarky. None of us escape death. Each death is a moment of reflection on our own life and where we are in it.