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Abbott writes Delta: Sharing grief on the information highway

Last Saturday I sat down in front of my apple desktop with my morning coffee in my cozy top floor office to check the weather, my email, and scroll through my facebook. It’s a ritual I find comforting.
Sharing Grief on the Information Highway

Last Saturday I sat down in front of my apple desktop with my morning coffee in my cozy top floor office to check the weather, my email, and scroll through my facebook. 

It’s a ritual I find comforting. I love reading about the thoughts and activities of friends and family who live in different time zones while I sleep.  

The first post I saw was from a dear friend of almost 30 years. He had been reluctant to fully participate in facebook but a new happiness made him go public. Working on a project in Asia he and his partner were excited to share they were pregnant with twins.  He was the father of 2 young adult sons; she was going to be a first time Mum. 

I felt his excitement and the joy of being a parent once again later in life. I watched as the birth date got closer. He posted videos on bathing a baby, swaddling an infant, and the latest fad for toddlers, rubber stress boobies! 

His twins arrived and his 98 facebook friends got to see intimate pictures of the delivery day. Healthy newborn twins, puffy eyed, downy white with droopy heads wrapped in yellow hospital blankets flanked by their proud parents. 

I ‘liked’ the photos, and wrote a congratulatory comment along with many of his other facebook friends. We were part of the journey, carried along for the ride. Every few weeks I would see the babies growing and changing and when professional photos were posted I cooed at my screen as they celebrated all their happiness and hope for the future. They took a trip, we saw them on the plane, by the pool, we were watching.

Saturday morning the post was different. “Our beautiful 4 month old baby daughter passed away suddenly on Friday at 2 am.” Grief poured out of my friends extended post, followed by assurances that the other twin was healthy. I wept in disbelief as I scrolled through photos of the baby with her twin, kissed by her Father, smiling at her Mother.  I felt the gravity of tragedy striking when we least expect it. 

All day I couldn’t shake the news that this sweet baby was taken so suddenly from her family. But I was also impacted by the way I received the news. The medium is the message, according to Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan, because it dictates, “The scale and form of human association and action”. 

Facebook

Coined in 1964 his media theory was never more relevant than last Saturday when I sat before my computer in shock reading about my friends agonizing intimate loss.  I felt the power of the medium I use everyday. The power it has to communicate in good times and in bad. The message was immediate, shocking and delivered by the capacity of the facebook medium.

My facebook feeds are full of important milestones, rights of passages, and hard won accomplishments. I know when some friends are having a nap or whether they like bran over blueberry.  This is the deal we make with facebook to love you for the mundane and the extraordinary?  We can choose to go public or private in times of tragedy, that is the beauty of the medium. 

In 2005 when my husband became ill we spent 2 years struggling to keep his pancreatic cancer at bay, facebook wasn’t an option. While we were very open with his illness I couldn’t imagine posting about the rollercoaster ride we lived everyday, but I will always wonder.

I hope the messages of love and support comfort my friend and his partner, so far away from home and family, and with a long road of grief ahead of them, facebook keeps them connected. No one questions their decision to go public, because there is only love and compassion among friends.

The medium may be the message, but this message is much too personal to let the medium get in the way!

Ingrid Abbott is a freelance broadcaster & writer living in Tsawwassen. To view her blog go to abbottwrites.wordpress.com.