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A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

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Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#171

Post by msutherl »

tychof wrote: post #157
shocks wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man, hope you're doing okay. I know it's hard, but keep smiling. She'd want it that way. :) Sorry for your loss.

Please understand that something you think is helpful may not be. You should assume it isn't unless you have specific knowledge of the person involved. In general, the bereaved don't need platitudes which cheapen their loss or try to fast-forward them through the grieving process. Don't presume to know what the deceased _or_ the bereaved feel or _should_ feel, and don't assume they share/d your beliefs. Instead of 'c…

I upvoted you here. Platitudes are generally unnecessary and shocks' tone was a bit prescriptive. It's just not good manners.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#174

Post by dalek_cannes »

matznerd wrote: post #162
InTheSwiss wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my girlfriend died I could not bring myself to remove her from my friends list. She is still there. Her beautiful smile looks at me nearly every day. Some days I am glad to see that little profile picture of hers and others it is painful. Her family could have the account closed I guess but I think they feel the same as me and closing it is like deleting a little part of what we have left of her :(

I feel you. A girl I dated passed away and her family deleted all of her social media accounts. I was already still coping with losing her in the real world and then she instantly vanished from the online world too. There were pictures of her and me that I no longer have access to, and our conversations now show up with a blank face (Facebook chat was the last way we communicated). The only remnant I could find of he…

Perhaps this is a good thing? (Forgive me if it's not and I'm being insensitive)

Before human beings developed external memories (photographs and now digital records of everything we do), trauma and negative memories were supposed to slowly fade away, and they did. Only mildly emotional residues remained. Our psychological itch to keep experiencing sights and sounds associated with a thing or person lost could not be scratched no matter how tempted we were.

Now we can. Not only that, we consider it some sort of obligation to carry the burden. We scratch the wound just as it starts to heal and it's like experiencing the loss over and over again.

or may be that's just my experience. I used to be in a permanent state of melancholy because I always reminisced about past losses, even when the present was good. I don't do that anymore. I've a rule, in fact: never replay a negative experience more than once unless you have new data to re-evaluate it in a different light.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#175

Post by jes5199 »

jotm wrote: post #35
noonespecial wrote: post #8

As one of the older folks on HN, I can tell you that death in the age of facebook is strange in that even when they are gone there's still a "there-ness" to them thanks to left over accounts. Its almost like at any moment, a tweet will pop up or an update to a wall... Perhaps that's the 21st century version of seeing ghosts.

I wonder if there's a way to set up a "I'm dead" message that would post when you're dead. I dunno, maybe have an app check the SSN/NID status to be 100% sure, then post a prerecorded message...

a friend of mine died, and his obituary was posted on a blog he collaborated on. His twitter account retweeted his own obituary notice - presumably he had it automated to retweet things from that account that mentioned his name.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#176

Post by NovemberWest »

I tend to hate stuff like this. He closes with suggesting life is fleeting and you should keep up to date with still living friends. There is no indication he is actually doing that. People routinely have wonderful things to say about the dead, often when they said (and did) terrible things to them while alive.

Maybe he isn't a hypocrite but I have seen this too often from people who are.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#177

Post by noufalibrahim »

noonespecial wrote: post #8

As one of the older folks on HN, I can tell you that death in the age of facebook is strange in that even when they are gone there's still a "there-ness" to them thanks to left over accounts. Its almost like at any moment, a tweet will pop up or an update to a wall... Perhaps that's the 21st century version of seeing ghosts.

I don't know if you're familiar with the "Black Mirror" series. They're very hard hitting commentaries on our modern societies. One of the episodes (the first one of the second season) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes#S... is about such a situation where a person is "brought back to life" using the "image" they've left on social media sites as well as on private digital archives (personal photos etc.). It's not too far from reality which makes it all the more disturbing. I highly recommend it.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#178

Post by NovemberWest »

DanBC wrote: post #71

A very close friend died. I knew she died, she died while she was on the phone to me. I had my cell phone (to her) in one hand and my landline (to the police) in the other. They were saying "ask her about landmarks! Ask her for her address!" and she was saying "oh ho ho! You won't get it out of me that easily". The online stuff is a bit hard for me to deal with. She had a friendster page, but not Facebook. There's a…

Is there anything you wish you had done different before it got to that point? I am sorry for your loss but these things usually do not just come out of the blue. There is usually a lot of history, history which could have potentially gone different.

Re: A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea

#180

Post by nyrina »

tuananh wrote: post #172

simplest friend test: remove your bday on facebook and count how many wishes you get on your next bday ; ) You don't have that many "friends" as you think you do.

I have a bunch of, what I would describe as, friends, but I know none of their birthdays.

Does that mean I don't have a single friend?

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