Thought Picnic: Facebook bearing news of deaths

Face tough news

The way Facebook has invaded our space is quite alarming to some extent and it led to a conversation I was not too willing to have.

In pretence and denial, I dodged the premise and the direction the conversation was going in as I chatted to my dad the other day. I had called to express my condolences at the passing of my aunt, his second younger sister.

I learnt of her passing on Facebook as I have learnt of the passing of at least 3 other relations. Going through time-lines of the friends, you happen upon a status that in some cases is as clear as plain English and in others it is cryptic but indicative that something serious has happened.

Face finality

Though, this time, the information came to me as a message, at other times, one is never prepared for the suddenness of the impact of just a phrase that suggest an end with such finality and resignation that we all comfort ourselves with promises of religion many of which are leaps of faith than experiences of reality.

The wonder of that thing called life, terminated in the seizure of breath and the stopping of the heart suggests that is more to flesh and bones than we sometimes give the simpleness of humanity credit for.

Everything ceases and decay begins to set in, every essence of existence gives way to what we all have to do eventually, commit and excuse, we are left with only one enduring thing, memories in recollections, dreams and voices, the concentration in our thoughts of the experience that was the person when they were then with us.

Face truth

So, as my father suggested that the way things are, I might just read of his passing on Facebook, he was probably closer to the truth than I was ready to admit. It makes you want a different medium to be informed of the death of a close relation than to read of it in crudely crafted words of sadness and grief. Your heart stopping for a moment as you really hope that what you’ve read is not true.

Facebook is not a dream, it is reality that slaps us in the face daily from the trivial to the serious and I do not think we have made adequate provision for the consequences of what gets revealed therein.