Facebook has its pluses and minuses. However you’d like to categorize it, being able to message people in your Facebook “network” can be a plus or a minus. Yesterday, it felt like a big plus. Seven years ago, a former high school classmate experienced the death of her father. She was clearly stricken with grief by it, and posted the eulogy she wrote for him as a note on Facebook. I saw it in my feed that day in 2008, which was the year we both graduated from college, and I felt so awful when I read it. I could feel myself tearing up, my face getting hot while reading through it, wondering how terrible and alone she must have felt while delivering that speech at her father’s funeral. I knew I had to say something to her, even if we were never officially friends in real life. So I sent her a Facebook message, expressing my condolences, and I told her that I really believed her father was watching over her life now in another form, and that in another form, he’d always be with her.
Yesterday, after I uploaded my Facebook/Instagram post about Bart representing Ed on Ed’s birthday, this same person reached out to me to say how moved she was by my post. She said that because Facebook stores all old messages, my message to her all those years ago immediately came up when she started typing in my name to message me, and she remembered how happy and grateful she felt that I’d reached out to her all those years ago. Honestly, if she had never messaged me today, I never would have remembered ever reaching out to her and writing this message. This was part of her message to me yesterday:
“I saw the photo you posted for your brother’s birthday and I wanted to tell you I’m very sorry for your loss and that you’ve been so strong. I think it’s wonderful that you bring Bart with you wherever you go. It’s really beautiful and I’m sitting here with a couple tears in my eyes looking at your Instagram photos with Bart everywhere with you around the world. Ed is so lucky to have you as a sister, because he can still see the world through you. I think you already know without me saying this that it’s totally fine to cry, even after years have passed – because I still cried this year on my dad’s birthday, too! No one will forget. Thanks for sharing with us all.”
Facebook forces us to remember the thoughtful messages that others have written us, which I guess is sort of a nice thing. It also allows us to reach out and be supportive to others who may not be close to us, but sort of still know us, because sometimes when you least expect it, you can get support from those you never really thought cared at all. That’s pretty amazing sometimes.