Navigating Death And Grief in a Hyper-Connected World
When a family loses a loved one there is a responsibility in the immediate aftermath of a death that must be carried out. Who needs to be informed?
The good old days
I will use the example of an elderly person who is known to be coming to the end of their life. They may be in hospital and relatives and close family friends will be called to visit for the last time. Most families will then take part in a vigil in the hospital and this generally involves the children and spouse of this person. Eventually, they pass away with their family at the bedside. After the emotional outpouring and medical confirmation of the death, people outside of this group will have to be informed.
Most people close to the family will be primed for a phone call and expecting the sad news. Over the next few days more phone calls are made, funerals are arranged and hopefully everyone who wants to attend will have been informed. The responsability of informing people is shared out amongst family members. They make phone calls to those closest to the deceased and ask them to spread the news of the death. A formal announcement could be made in a local paper and at church services.
I think what I have just described is a reasonable generalisation of what use to occur before 2010. After this period another way of communicating arose which was through social media. The question became who will post this information on social media. From personal experience I was informed by a relative not to go anywhere near social media to announce their demise. I know of other younger people whose passing was quickly memorialised online.
Announcements and reactions
Before this period the only families who would have to consider making a public announcement about a death where those of famous people. Deceased actors, politicians and sports stars with a public profile would all have a thoughtful statement pass onto to television, radio and newspapers. We the public would hear about it and discuss the merits of the deceased amongst ourselves.
In my house growing up, an announcement of a famous person passing would be on the radio at breakfast. My father may have a robust opinion about this individual and invariably my mother would be much kinder. As we grew as children, we became more involved in these conversations. We always knew to tread carefully if one of these individuals was held in high regard by one our parents. Similar conversations continued in our schools and parental workplaces.
Infamy
Some deaths were infamous. This may involve a murder or a terrible accident. The families of the deceased in these circumstances may have an official spokesperson talk on their behalf or may even be presented at a press conference to raise awareness or to satisfy public interest about a particular case. Watching these interviews I always felt a sense of relief that it was not me who would be forced into this situation. I have since met an individual whose relative was murdered. Without going into the circumstances, it sounded like a horrific experience appearing in public at the worst time imaginable.
Living and dying online
At the present point in history many of us have a life online. We communicate and share experiences through social media. This is recycled through the legacy media and cycle continues. For most of us announcing a death on a social media platform will get immediate responses from a group of people. Many but certainly not all will attend the funeral and pass on their condolences to the immediate family. In a sense if you are familiar with social media and the death is announced their will be limited interactions with the wider online community and things will go on relatively unencumbered by announcing the death online. As for the funeral due to certain features of social media platforms it may even help with the organisation.
Our lives online are hard to ring fence like our homes. It may not be the family announcing the death of a loved one to the world online. This may be done by are third party completely unrelated to them.
For famous people any announcement in the social media sphere will now attract the attention of people far and distant from the deceased. The conversations I used to have with my family around the kitchen table are now conducted in this very public forum. A famous actor who died may have had discretions in their past that will be brought up in any online discussions. They may even become popular and reposted all around the world. If it becomes viral, it then becomes newsworthy to the mainstream media. Some people think this is the price of being famous and others are very uncomfortable with this occurring.
An infamous death on social media has the potential to become very destructive to any family members of the deceased person. There have always been media instrustion into the death of individuals as discuss previously. Unfortunately, there is a potential for social media to become unpredictably viral, draw in attention, speculation and the darker side of human nature. It is particularly unpleasant when children our involved. In recent times we have seen certain deaths start a cascade across the social and legacy media drawing in commentary from seeming every section of society. Some events transcend borders of countries and involve discussion from the most powerful people in the world. I am not sure any family at the centre of these stories has the capacity deal with this type of attention.
Grieving on social media
How do we express our grief on social media? Do we need to express our grief in this space? I have no answer to this, this is a personal decision with one caveat. If you have a young person in the house, I recommend you monitor their activity. They need time away from their griefing and hopefully the company of individuals who will be supportive. The online world does not always supply this and a younger person may need help disengaging from this environment.
As an adult you are entitled to do, post and say what you want about your loss. The fact that we can be very emotional at times means that posting anything in this frame of mind maybe something you do in haste and repent at leisure. I would also point to fact that things can quickly be taken out of your control. I am not talking about these worldwide social media viral events but something more local. If your family is part of a school community, religious group or sports club and your grief becomes a talking point it can be incredibly painful. Anecdotally I have heard about lashing out online and publicly blaming people for a particular death. It is not as uncommon as we it should be. Remember these are some of people we may have to face every day in our communities.
I have never been a big user of social media and until I started writing on Substack I never commented on the loss of my son. I think time and the ability to create considered long form written pieces has made me more comfortable discussing my grief publicly. When I do this, I know I may be courting opinions that I may not like or agree with. I do not have a large audience or any commentary that has been overtly negative so there has been no downside to doing this. This can change very quickly.
I do think posting on social media is often a very emotional thing. Many of these platforms are based on a limbic capitalism model. They do want us in an emotional state and to keep coming back for more. At the risk of sounding like a middle-aged man I am, I do prefer to keep certain conversations around a kitchen table with people I know and trust. If you are not a person like me and you have found comfort in the social media space then that is a good thing. In general, as a society, we are still deciding the corect social media etiquette for many things including death and grieving. It has only be a short time, less than a generation that we have been working on this. As with most things in this networked world we are still feeling are way through it all.
I went to share it on our TCF social media and one of the other admins beat me to it 😆