In Memoriam
November 14th, 2020
Starring: The Mourner
THE MOURNER
We weren’t friends. As far as Facebook was concerned, we were friends, but we weren’t friends.
We went to school together. For one year, in sixth grade. He sat near me in Spanish. He liked drawing stick figures fighting with nunchucks and ninja stars. He was pretty confident for a new kid. He talked a big game about tennis. He said his coach had coached Andrei Agassi, but nobody really believed him. I think he was just trying to fit in.
But then he wasn’t back the next Fall. Someone said he’d moved again, and that was that.
Until today, when his obituary popped up on my newsfeed.
I was shocked, of course. Anytime that happens to anyone, you wonder what happened. Especially when you haven’t thought about the person in ten years.
His account was still active, so I looked.
He ended up playing tennis. Division III, at a small state school. His profile picture was him holding a trophy with this look on his face, kind of saying like uh... “duh.” The same confidence. The same kid I remembered, just all grown up.
So I kept scrolling down. Down through his team photos, and family thanksgivings, and graduations. Then college signing day then prom then getting his drivers license. This his middle school statuses about snow days and summer reading and Wimbledon. There were elementary school photos, which led to toddler photos, which led to baby photos... then I hit the bottom. I saw his whole life in eleven scrolls.
...
And the whole time, all I could think was, “oh my god, is this how it ends?” Getting stalked by some random kid from 6th grade? Is that what I’d want?
Because I’m doing it. And...you want to blame the site, right? Like here’s this magical interface that’s made to connect people, and you sign up before you start puberty and you friend all these people who you know when you’re 12 because it’s cool but then everyone grows up and goes their separate ways but nobody unfriends anybody, and all the sudden you see people getting their grad degrees and getting married and having kids and...and dying. And it’s kind of fucked. That I can see everything about these people without ever really knowing them.
But that’s not Facebook’s fault. I could reach out to every single one of those people, if I wanted to. But I don’t. I’m choosing not to. I’d rather be a digital ghost who walks through walls, see as much as I want to see, and when I’m ready move on, poof.
And I can do it to them and they can do it to me and we can all watch eachother’s lives unfold without any effort.
Until it’s too late.
...
I did not read his obituary. I didn’t want to feel worse, so I just...logged off.
Poof.