This month’s post takes on a deeply personal note. Earlier this month a friend of mine, and to many in the hospitality community of Leeds, died far too soon. As with previous recent personal losses, I have found the Facebook Remembrance pages a real comfort and something of a ‘living’ memoriam. In this post I will share my views and insights on this service provided by FB and why I believe, against the myriad of things they do that make me question my ‘membership’, it is something of true value.
To the lay persons amongst us – Facebook is a bright, red pocked reversed saltire of organized chaos. Its innumerable features come and go like guests at a party with each one either improving with age or ignominiously leaving without a parting word. In the 14 years I have used the social media platform I’ve kept the number of bells and whistles I ring and play with to an absolute minimum. However, when my brother passed away in 2015, we had to address his social media identity. Simon was not an avid user of social media per se – but he enjoyed posting on subjects that were close to his heart: such as the local community buzz and his passion for cars. When Simon died, we had to organize for his Facebook profile to be changed to ‘Remembering…’. I don’t recall it being a laborious process; one more sorrowful light switched off as we cleared the rooms of a life lived. However, his remembrance page became a place where friends and family could share pictures and memories as we all expressed our grief and came to terms with our loss.
It wasn’t until a few years back when the full capacity for Facebook remembrance became more visceral. In February of 2018, one of my closest friends died after fighting lung cancer for twelve months at the age of 42. David and I first worked together at The Wardrobe restaurant and nightclub in 1999 and remained very close for nearly twenty years and shared, unlike my brother, a wide and very active social circle. At the time of his death, he had a five-year-old son, and my two boys were six and eleven respectively – so we shared lives beyond the hedonism of our twenties and well into the ‘middleship’ of our new families. I was certain we would see retirement together and fill the autumn years of our friendship with time spent reminiscing to the sounds of laughter from our respective grandchildren. His death was a hammer blow. A desperately unfair event that came with no justification – just a steep drop off a smooth unforgiving cliff face with no ridges, hand or foot holds to cling to and take stock – until his Facebook profile moved into ‘remembering’.
It quickly filled with pictures, videos, stories of rum-fueled, beer powered exploits through the bars and restaurants of Leeds a number of which we worked in or opened together. It became a place to find purchase – to pull ourselves into a place of some security – where grief ‘could happen’ and be shared across time zones and free from geographical boundaries. To this extent – it operated as a traditional ‘In-Memoriam’
The concept of ‘in-memoriam’ has been a western stalwart of the grieving process for over a millennia. An opportunity for all who knew the departed soul to mark make on how their living spirit had touched their lives and shaped their own identities. It also operates as a grief-marker for those of us forced to live ‘after-life’.
The concept of ‘in-memoriam’ has been a western stalwart of the grieving process for over a millennia. An opportunity for all who knew the departed soul to mark make on how their living spirit had touched their lives and shaped their own identities. It also operates as a grief-marker for those of us forced to live ‘after-life’.
‘After life’ is an interesting term. Within everyday conversation it refers to those who believe in an immaterial soul whose existence carries once the body has ceased to be. We can never truly know whether this is true, but we do know that we ourselves, those ‘left behind’, must lead lives ‘after’ the passing of a loved one. To this extent it is we who are experiencing an ‘after-life’. David’s death and the use of his FB ‘Remembering’ page gave an added dimension to coping ‘after-life’ and remains a way of coping to this day.
Our Facebook pages are an extension of our identity – an updated digital representation of our conscious minds. Though it is managed by us, its necessary component is that it is co-constructed with friends and family. So even though it is our conscious mind that creates and updates our profile – that other important element, the part co-constructed by others…continues. So, unlike a ‘book of remembrance, ‘remembrance’ becomes active. The architect has passed on – but we, the friends and family keep building. David was a chef by trade and taught me a great deal about how to love food. Not long after he died, I was at a friendly gathering where a professional chef and friend to the host was cooking. My eldest son donned an apron got stuck into the ‘mis en place’. David would’ve loved this, I thought. So, a quick snap of my son in his makeshift ‘whites’ made its way to David’s page and was quickly ‘liked’ and discussed by David’s friends. And this is how it warms the refuge of our grief. Our FB identity is our community of friends. We can post and comment and share on the episodes of our life that he would have found heart-warming, funny and irreverent! We are not all living some covert illusory consensus – we know he’s dead. But his identity is not. It literally lives on through this place where his personality, his history and his face and voice remain accessible and engageable.
The Facebook Remembering service has truly been a gift for me personally – and it’s such a treat when friends post videos they found on their phones, or visit a place special to them that reminds us all of David’s life and presence. There’s also potentially a place for his son to visit, to discover David’s life and how much he meant to so many of us.
Remembering Tom (my friend who passed earlier this month):
Tom, you were such splendid company. You supported my blog when I started it last year and were one of the first to subscribe. We enjoyed many discussions and debates as our paths crossed numerous times across the hospitality sector in Leeds in the first decade of the new millennium. You were defined by a warm gruffness that suited the identity of an old soul whose sarcasm and ironic disposition could be unwieldy and hurtful in less experienced hands. Instead, with you, it came as insightful, comical, and always with an earnest heart. The sadness of your passing is amplified by the young family left behind who must now forge ‘after’ lives without your companionship. However, as grief requires us to fashion a ‘new normal’ the core materials that forged the legacy of your identity – your work ethic, your authenticity and your capacity for love are forever present and will provide the foundations for your children’s identities and will be the substance of their resilience.
Tom’s family have chosen ‘Cloth Cat’ as a place to donate instead of flowers. A dynamic organization that provides music education and opportunities to children in the more deprived areas of inner city Leeds.
StoatAubergine 