Sorry to be dense, but can someone explain why this is on the front page? Obvs sad for this person, seems like she had a fun time, but that's true of millions of people. Take this as "Help me see what I'm obviously not seeing", not a complaint.

As someone with ALS and won't see next year, please do not post my memoriam page to HN.

I don't understand what it is doing here either.

A perfectly fair question, and predictably but unfortunately down voted.

I think it's of interest because (1) it implicitly presents a question of how to go about a premeditated end-of-life message to be shared in an online space.

And (2) relative to typical prose in this context, it's a bit cheeky, more like an "aw, shucks" than a grand tragedy. Something about it reached across the veil of impersonality, again in a digital space. And to me at least it's raising a question of how you choose to express yourself and how that choice gives you life in the ability to be regarded and known by others, and perhaps an even more general question of how we're all already doing something like that on a day to day basis. I don't think anyone who voted on it said any of that stuff out loud but you could feel those themes as implicitly present even if it's hard to put your finger on exactly what they are.

To your point I don't think it's the only message that has questions like those behind it, but I don't think it's ever been teed up for community discussion quite like this.