ep 02: transcript
02. Grief on Social Media
Hi everyone - welcome to the grief coach. If you’ve already listened, thanks for coming back and if you’re new I’m excited you’re here. You can find us on Instagram and twitter @the_griefcoach and if you want to email me feedback or ideas for future episodes please reach out to hello@thegriefcoach.co. Today we’re going to talk about grief on social media. We’re going to cover what it’s like to grieve on social media and how to deal with turning off the deceased’s social media. This is a relatively new thing we need to think about. Most of us check social media multiple times a day… and if you’re like me you probably spend several hours on social media a day. Whatever your stance is on social media, it’s a big part of our daily lives so it makes sense that in grief, many of us turn to social media as a way to share news and to look for comfort in our grief.
Historically there was an obituary in the paper and you would have to make phone calls to notify people of someone’s death. With our current social media landscape, you can notify thousands of people in a status update. Many people can and do write tributes to the deceased and post memories and photos which are really beautiful. But it also means that people can post these tributes and photos before everyone has been notified. Imagine yourself scrolling through Instagram (maybe you are multi tasking right now). Sandwich in between a meme and picture of your friend's salad, you pass a tribute to a celebrity who just passed. For many of us, we only ever find out about celebrities deaths via social media, but now imagine that tribute is someone you know and were close to. It's a wholly different experience we haven't had to navigate before.
Some people I’ve spoken with have negative feelings of what they consider to be performative grief on social media, especially if those who are considered to be performing said grief weren’t as close with the deceased. I feel like I often see this type of thing with social figures but in speaking to this friend of mine he had experiences of seeing it with people he knew who had passed. He said he felt like when people made a big show of grieving on social media, it was for those who are still alive and not necessarily a way to honor the dead. You may not fully agree with this but understand what he means. In grief, most of us want to feel connected to other people who are experiencing what we are, so this concept at times make sense to me. What I know we can all agree upon is the fact that we are all still figuring out what's appropriate.
For so many of us social media consumes a lot of our lives and so consequently it’s where a lot of us share news. Many people view their social media following as their community. An easy way to keep up with people. This begs the question - what is appropriate? A lot of us have different thoughts on this, I have different thoughts on this! I think one of the most important things to keep in mind when posting is are you sharing your own news? Will your post affect other people? What would the deceased want? A lot of the time we are very honest on social media and end up telling 1000+ people something that maybe we wouldn’t necessarily tell them in person… because maybe we have drifted apart and wouldn't see them in person. I think a lot of us are probably a lot more candid on social media because we don’t have to see people's reactions in real time. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes maybe it isn't? I don’t know what the right answer but I know it’s a conversation we need to be having, and one we’ll cover later in this episode.
My dad never posted on social media that he was sick. He would post pictures of beautiful architecture, landscapes, things that were of interest to him - but never that he was sick. He would always critique my short punchy captions “What’s the context? Who are you with? What are you doing?” I went to a Beyoncé concert and posted the queen and bee emoji and he commented “But who is the act?” I would explain it doesn’t work like that dad, but he asked and asked regardless. Even now, I’m sometimes more sentimental in posts, but generally I prefer something shorter.
I would like to compare this to my aunt who recently died of lung cancer. She was very honest on social media about her illness, she put up a post about her diagnosis and, at the beginning, updates about her prognosis. When things got a bit more serious she set up a private group where she updated friends on what was going on with her treatment and ultimately her hospice care. The group was a streamlined way for her to update her community and for them to message her and after her passing, share memories.
We all know that everyone has different opinions on what social media should be. I think of it as a highlight reel or a scrapbook. Before all of this happened with my dad I didn’t typically post about my feelings on the internet. Whereas my brother used social media as a way to express his emotions on all sorts of topics. I would say jeez Travis why are you being so emotional on the internet and he would shrug and response with a it’s my page not yours. I never posted that my dad was sick while he was alive. I would fundraise for cancer research and, say someone really close to me is fighting this horrible disease, I’d post a request to please donate to research so we can find a cure. When he told family members and friends who are super active on social media that he was sick he told them they weren’t allowed to post anything about his illness. Some took to posting memories or old photos but they were ultimately respectful of his wishes and didn’t post about him specifically until after he had passed away.
The night he died was terrible. Obviously. A lot of our family was there and texts went in the middle of the night to let people know. I woke up and saw a few posts that family members had put on social media and they had tagged him. My first thought was oh my god, this is how a lot of people close to him are going to find out. instead of sitting there and taking the morning to be sad, maybe going on a walk, or sleeping because one exhausting journey was over while another was just beginning, I spent the time calling his close friends hoping they didn’t find out from Facebook. I called his friends in Montreal, Quebec, California, Maryland, New Jersey, France, Sweden, and Minnesota. One at a time sharing the sad news that he went peacefully last night, again hoping they had heard it from me before reading the news online. My brother, processing in his own way, posted on Instagram and Facebook some time that day and since him and I share several friends texts began to come in. I’m going to stop here and say these tributes were beautiful and it was nice to see what pictures people were posting. It was so kind for people to reach out. However, this was less than 24 hours in, and receiving these messages and then having to say thank you for condolences was a lot for me. Every thank you and hearted text was a small reminder that he was really gone.
I waited until the next day for my social acknowledgement. I picked ten photos of him that we loved, and captioned it “I’ll always be with you and you’ll always be with me” along with the dates of his birth and death. A week or so before he died we were lying in his bed resting, he was on painkillers and looked like a sick version of my dad. I don’t know what the conversations were but I know in those last few weeks I told him over and over again that I loved him, knowing there would be a time when he wouldn’t be able to say it back. So I assume I said I loved you or I’ll miss you and he said “I’ll always be with you and you’ll always be with me”. It’s not the same as him actually physically being here but obviously a nice and true sentiment. Then he went quiet and fell back asleep. Once I put up this post I got a lot of condolence comments and texts. By the end I was just hearting things because I was too tired to come up with a response to “sorry for your loss”. It’s my most liked post on Instagram, and since he died I’ve posted two other posts about him on Instagram & Facebook–One on Father’s Day and another on the six month anniversary of his death. These are by far my most lengthy and honest posts. I wonder what my dad would have to say about that. One of his friends commented on the six month anniversary that it is so nice that I put up these posts because it gives them a space to grieve.
Since he passed several of his friends have friended me on Facebook. Some I’m close with, some I’m not, some I’ve never met. I normally don’t post on Facebook anymore as I prefer Instagram but for some reason I feel like it’s important to post here as well so his friends can see. I know no one is going to forget him. But I almost am concerned people will forget I’m still sad and this is still so hard.
In these posts I make comments about the complexity of grief, which I have found we often want to wrap up in a cute little bow in a tiny box, but that’s not how grief works. It’s complex and it’s messy. Social media has allowed me, and I know many others, the space to grieve with our community. People can share stories and memories in the comments and that’s a really beautiful thing. I think in a lot of cases social media kind of takes the pressure off, because it can be a short interaction, which sometimes is all I need.
There are a lot of different types of grief support groups on social media. I think part of the reason these are so popular is because people need space to grieve and grief never ever goes away. Depending on where you are with your grief you can have long discussions in support groups, or just read what other people have to say so you know you aren’t alone.
Now I want to talk about closing down a dead person’s social media. I “memorialized” his Facebook and Instagram; I notified LinkedIn. This was very easy and straightforward, you say the person died, you provide a link to the obituary, and you say your relationship to the person. On Facebook and Instagram you can choose to have the page deleted or memorialized, which means the page stays up. On Facebook it says “in memoriam” and on Instagram it doesn’t say anything. LinkedIn takes the page down.
A lot of people love the ‘in memoriam’ function that Facebook offers because it allows you a place to go when you miss the deceased. A lot of people will write messages to the deceased which can be nice for other people to look at. And I know for me, I often go to his social profiles and look through his pictures when I miss him.
I thought I had mastered grief on social media. However, I was not prepared for an Instagram “Memories” to pop up with a picture of him and a year before. It’s a picture of us at the beach and it’s the first time I saw him since his diagnosis. My first reaction was sadness and I posted it to my stories with the following text “Instagram just notified me of my post from a year ago. This was the first weekend I saw him since he diagnosis and we were really hopeful he could beat it. I can’t believe how much has happened in the past year. Fuck.” Then I got angry. I thought the whole point of marking someone deceased on these platforms was so you didn’t get notifications like this. I did the administrative work so why was I getting this??? I posted a second story asking if anyone knew someone at Instagram or Facebook and what was the thought process behind having someone marked as deceased show up in the “on this day” algorithm. Side note, if you happen to work there and are listening to this, please slide into my DMs with the rational here. Please tell me what the point of marking someone as deceased if they will continue to show up in the memories algorithm, because I don’t get it. And it really made me mad. It’s one thing if I decide I want to go there and be sad, it is completely another thing when it is hurled at you in your notifications. Grieving on the internet is really emotional and puts you in a vulnerable position for other people to weigh in or comment on. It should be your choice if you want to go there.
To close, I want to say there is no right or wrong way to grieve in public. Within my own family we have different ways of processing our grief publicly to our social media communities and that’s ok. I think the biggest piece of advice I can offer is to take lead from the immediate family on what is appropriate as far as the amount of information you choose to present and the timing of when you present it..
Thanks for listening.You can find us at @the_griefcoach on Instagram and Twitter or write to us at hello@thegriefcoach.co. Talk to you soon.