Yes, Facebook. I’m talking to you.
I don’t need to see my mother’s face as avatar all over my news feed.
And I don’t need to see all of the “RIP Grandma” status posts and messages of condolence slipping through that same news feed.
I’ve deliberately not posted a message myself on my own wall in order to avoid all of that from my own friends, but it’s leaking through all the same because many of my friends are people who knew and loved my mother.
Maybe I’d feel differently if I didn’t permanently have this connection now between Facebook and my mother dying. Maybe I’d be feeling more generous and understanding. I’m not there yet.
I got an e-mail from a friend of my parents’ (a very sweet lady) that included the sentiment “I know how you are feeling but we all have to be there for your Dad now”. And it’s making me cranky, I think because it presumes both that she knows exactly how my grief is manifesting itself and that my grief is insignificant compared to my father’s. I don’t like that her well-intentioned message is evoking this reaction in me — she’s grieving herself (and she lost her own mother when she was much younger so she has been in a similar situation) — or that the activity on Facebook is doing the same thing. It’s not my place to dictate how anyone else grieves. But the feelings are there all the same. It’s something I’m going to have work through and come to grips with — I’m not as enlightened as I would wish to be.
It does all make me want to turn off my computer for awhile, though.
And maybe that’s a good thing.
Life Begins at 41...or maybe 43 