Millennial Afterlife ✨
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Grief Gone Digital
Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels
Last week, one of my oldest friend’s father passed away. This friend and I attended elementary, middle, and high school together; we knew each other’s families well, and I remember her father as a constant presence, full of energy and passion. When I heard that her father had passed on, my heart ached for my friend and her family. But there was another layer to my sadness: the dull pain of my own grief, my own father’s passing still fresh in my mind, body, and heart.
I learned of my friend’s father’s passing on Facebook where she posted information about attending the mass and memorial virtually. The day of his funeral, she posted her eulogy for her father on her Facebook wall. It was funny and poignant, light-hearted while also being deeply moving. I scrolled through all of the messages of condolences that friends and family posted in response, sharing their sadness with my friend and her family.
Thinking back to the time surrounding my father’s death, I considered my choice not to announce his passing on Facebook; instead, I sent an email to friends and family. But reading through these messages of condolences, I longed for something similar for my father. I remembered that my sister did choose to make a tribute to our father on social media, so I went to her Facebook page and scrolled down until I found it—a collection of photographs accompanied by my sister’s heartbroken message written while she was still reeling in disbelief by our father’s departure from our lives. Scrolling through the messages beneath her post from friends and family, my heart felt buoyed by these words of love for our family and our father.
At the time of my father’s passing, I couldn’t fathom going onto social media. I didn’t want to share my pain publically because I didn’t want to get wrapped up into the feedback loop that posting on social media creates. I don’t regret my choice, but I do understand the value of having a virtual tribute to my grief and to my father’s life.
In college, one of our friends died in a bicycle accident. A sweet woman who was one of the most peaceful and beautiful people I’d ever met. Our college community reeled with sadness, and I often found myself returning to her Facebook page, which has become an ongoing tribute to her life. A living memorial where those who loved her return time and time again to pay their respect and show their love. Many come to leave messages to her, reminiscing about old times and filling her in on the ways she continues to touch their lives every day, although she is gone from this earthly plane. As writer Kyleigh Leddy writes in her Modern Love essay, Facebook pages of lost loved ones can “transcend absence, facilitate a continuation, an afterlife.”
My father wasn’t very active on Facebook, but he did have an account. Ever since he left us, his best friend Denis continues to post on Papi’s page, sharing the news of my son’s birth and writing how much he misses his best friend, “vieux frere”. Every so often, Facebook will remind me of a trip my father and I took together. “8 years ago!” Facebook announces beneath photos of us on a hill overlooking the ocean in the south of France, both of us making funny faces, a silly moment stolen from the vault of memories that Facebook faithfully lords over.
I don’t need Facebook to remind me how much I love my father and how much I miss the times we shared together. I don’t need Papi’s page to be a portal for me to communicate with my father. But I’m glad it’s there, a digital space where he still exists, somehow…
Tip of the Week
I failed last week in my quest to quit checking my email on my smartphone... but I'm not beating myself up about it. Instead, I'm doing my best to be device-free when my baby is awake and get all the digital desires out of the way while he's asleep. Not a tip, just my own little challenge.
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