Let's Talk About Death (and Facebook)

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Let's. Let’s talk about death. Not in a morose and sad way, but in a why does one hit harder than another, when I wouldn’t know about either were it not for social media. What is Facebook’s part in this whole life and death thing?

In the last 30 days, three people I know have died. I learned about each from Facebook, so I guess, thanks Zuckerberg.

From 4th to 6th grade, I was part of a cohort of smart, suburban kids. Not all nerds, Jimmy was the coolest boy in elementary school. Anywhere. Anytime. Any school. Paisley button down shirts and Beatle boots, his hair slicked back in a 50’s pompadour. I had an unnoticed and unspoken crush.

We followed each other on Facebook, the way one does when one wants to know, but not enough for an actual conversation. Though I never heard his music, I know he was a well-loved local musician. Another long-lost grade school classmate messaged me on Facebook to tell me he’d died. Like grass clippings that fly as you use a four-blade manual push mower, there was a gentle, barely audible, thwoop when I read the words. Jim and I probably hadn’t actually spoken since 1968.

In 1986, I worked on a comedy show at a legendary venue in Greenwich Village. Cindra’s father owned the theater, and she naturally grew into NYC music royalty. We crossed paths for decades, had friends in common, but she remained distant and dismissive. At least with me.

I accept the very real possibility I was a little jealous, because after her extended battle with cancer, odes and poems and tributes popped up on Facebook and other social media with words like loving, fun, supportive of the arts, and cool as hell. Apparently everyone loved her, except me.

Or maybe, no one writes shitty things about the dead because they don’t want to be rude.

For someone who wasn’t actually in my life, I have surprising number of feelings about her life and death. I learned about her battle with cancer, her death, and how well she was loved, via Facebook.

And Michelle. This hurt my heart. Of the three, we knew each other the shortest time, spent the least time in each other’s company. We met in a low-res MFA program, a hybrid situation that came together in person nine or ten days twice a year for two years. Four times in two years. I don’t think we were even in the same cohort. She, poetry and I, nonfiction.

But there was something.

We stayed in touch, barely, through Facebook and when she was in New York with her daughters, we met for a meal of which all I remember is she sat to my left, her two daughters across from us and I know this isn’t right, but I remember our table awash in a pale butter yellow light, coming from directly above. That’s what memory does. It fills in gaps with feelings you may not even know you had.

Harvey’s grandparents are two of my oldest friends. Those good friendships, you pick up where you left off when you do speak, but you don’t speak that often because time, distance, and life. I’d held their daughter, Teabags, in my arms when she was an infant. I watched their relationship fall apart, each going on to find the exact right someone; Teabags growing into a woman with her own family, growing into motherhood, into middle age. Into a mother who has lost a child.

Facebook told me her Harvey had died. I can’t be sure Harvey and I had ever met in person, but it felt like we had, watching him grow up, transition, and find his way in the world as a young man, by way of his mother and grandmother’s Facebook pages.

I’d’ve missed his life entirely. I’d’ve missed my friends’ loss. Would not have been able to reach out until someone thought to call me and say, hey, I don’t know if you heard…

I want to leave Facebook. Eschew Meta. I want to excise Zuckerberg. I also don’t want to lose the ability to be a fly on the wall. The bittersweet news a childhood crush has died. Or a mean girl I secretly envied and hated was gone. That my oldest friends’ grandchild has taken their own life.

I can’t leave Facebook.

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