Socially Yours

Stories are constantly written about why we should strive to unplug from our computers, ipads, Smartphones and other electronic devices but I read a work colleague's Facebook post yesterday and was reminded of how amazing social media truly is.

 

I work with a young guy named Aaron Knights and he was at the incredibly tender age of seven when his beloved father died from cancer at the age of 38.  Think about that for a minute.  Think about what you were like when you were seven.  The idea of losing a parent at that stage of your life is profound and pretty scary, right?

 

They say that when you have a child you sometimes end up reliving moments of your own childhood in the process of raising your own child.  Now, Aaron's daughter is seven years old and Aaron said she is asking Aaron a lot of questions about his Dad and she wants to know things like: What was he like? Was he funny? What would you two do together?

 

Aaron added that recently he was putting his daughter to bed and they were talking about what happened at school when spontaneously, in only the way a seven-year-old could, his daughter directly said to him, "I wish your Daddy didn't get sick and die.  I wish there was no sickness in the world. . .ever!"

Aaron said he tries to be as honest with his daughter as he can (I would be crying) but he only has so many stories that he remembers of his wonderful Dad because he was so young when his Dad died.  He wanted more stories for himself and for his daughter and he posted on Facebook a simple query about how he misses his Dad every day and asked people who might have known his Dad to share their memories with him and his daughter.

 

Social media does offer vast human connections which can be impersonal but are also immediate.  At last count, Aaron received more than 75 responses to his question about his Dad which to me is amazing!

 

Without Facebook, Aaron would have had to sit down and write emails or letters or made telephone calls and then waited for something to arrive in the mail or someone to call back.

Talking about a loved one who has died is good for everyone who knew the person because the conversations and the sharing of memories continues to connect you to that person you lost.  You are also passing along or even trying to recreate that person so that others who never had a chance to get to know the person feel in some way that they too do know this loved one who meant so much.

My son and I always talk about his Dad, some of the weird things he would do or say and also some of the wonderful and treasured things he achieved as a writer and a reporter.  I talk to my friends about him too and they sahre their stories with me.  It just makes us feel better and we never tire of it.  He may not be with us physically but he will never leave our hearts.

Aaron did an extraordinary thing by posting his request for stories about his Dad on Facebook.  He was opening himself up to stories he might never have heard before and even though he wanted those stories, he knew it would be painful to hear them because it would make him miss his Dad even more.  But he chose to get a dialogue going and help his daughter understand what her grandfather was like.

Sometimes you should plug in!
 

Not On A Pedestal

 

 

 

 

I wrote a post in June about my "paper chase" through boxes of memos, computer printouts, handwritten notes and personal writings that belonged to my husband who died eight years ago.  As I previously mentioned, after all these years, there are still lots of boxes sitting around waiting for my attention and this past weekend I found the time to go through another box.

 

You can choose to go through all of a loved one's papers yourself or you can do what a friend of mind did when his wife died: he paid someone to come to his house, box up his wife's belongings and take them out of the house to donate to others in need.  It was just too painful for my friend and he chose to make a clean break of it by having someone else move everything out.

 

I could follow my friend's example but I am too afraid I will miss something valuable.  Not necessarily something that's worth a lot of money, but something that's worth a lot to my heart.

 

I'm not sure what value I would put on this particular box.  At first it seemed worthless, full of things I could easily throw away, and then I came upon a very old interoffice work email that my husband had printed out.  My husband was a very busy man who wrote about serious issues and serious stories of the day. He had a great sense of humor, yet after reading a large amount of his work emails, it amazes me the ridiculous stuff he and some of his male colleagues would email each other about.  

 

With a subject line of "The 5 Toughest Questions Women Ask," this particular work email talked about an article in something called Sassy magazine; which I'm not even sure ever existed.  The email said that the five toughest questions women ask men are the following:

--Do you love me?
--What are you thinking?
--Do I look fat?
--Do you think she is prettier than me?
--What would you do if I died?

Basically, the email was silly and had an old boy piggy tone to it.  The questions and their accompanying answers continued with the theme that some women should be seen and not heard.  I'm sure in his own way my husband thought this was funny or maybe he thought the person who sent it to him was funny but the humor of it escaped me.  If he were alive, my husband probably would have handed to me and asked me what I thought of it.  I'm sure I would have rolled my eyes and said, "Not much."

 

This little exercise reminded me not to make my husband out to be a saint.  Not that I had made him out to be a saint, but sometimes with the passage of  time you forget the nuances and some of the things a person used to do.  This exercise also is making me see my stuff in a new light.

Just as we all do, my husband said and did things that were sometimes annoying and sometimes politically incorrect but I loved him anyway.  I think this is one of the reasons why only people who were emotionally close to the deceased person should go through their belongings.  They knew the whole person and really and truly understand the context of what the loved one left behind.