Death of a Friend

A friend of mine died yesterday . Not a close friend - but a Facebook friend.

I have in the past wondered on this blog about the value of friendships as defined by Facebook. It has seemed to me that the millions of people who were on Facebook, seemingly competing to collect friends, had a poor definition of friendship . That if the only value of Facebook was to keep a marginal, superficial relationship alive - then the social platform was of little or no use at all. I may have to change my mind about at least part of that opinion.

Only twice in my teaching "career" did a student ask if we could be Facebook friends. While both students were in the same cohort, they asked me the question, at the end of term, separately. I don't think I was aware that they knew each other well. I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have said no to both of them. It would have seemed to me to be a bad idea for a teacher to share what few personal details I post on Facebook with students and I don't think I was particularly interested in the minutia of their lives. Both of the students were bright, contributed to the class discussions, handed their work on in time and in general were fun to teach. They were the kind of students who make teaching a joy; something that one wants to do again and again in the hopes that there are other students out there who will be equally as interesting and on occasion, challenging.

One of the students had a boyfriend who was enrolled in another program at the college. I would occasionally see them together in the halls and if we had time we would exchange a few comments about the weather or school work. The two of them helped me feel as if I had a connection with at least a few students outside of the classroom.

That student, after graduating went on to university and studied archaeology. She posted every once in a while and I read her brief notes. I have no idea if she read my occasional notes. I don't think we ever directly wrote to each other. In her third year she posted a note that she had been diagnosed with ALS. Shortly afterwards she and her boyfriend got married.

In the past seven years there have been some fairly cryptic comments as to the challenges that she was facing, with long periods of no comments at all. One of her relatives started a GOFund me account to help pay for her extra medical needs and I, a couple of times, made small donations anonymously, but I had no connection with her except this occasional lurking on Facebook. A few weeks ago she announced in a rather subtle way that she had decided to pass from this earth. Her condition had worsened to the point where she, I suspect, needed total care and could no longer live at home. I suspect she decided to use the option of assisted suicide while she still had the capacity to do so.

She died yesterday, back at home with her husband, her family and her friends at her side. In the past week there have been perhaps a hundred messages and comments posted from people who knew her, with lots of pictures of her and her friends doing fun things. People who could not be there, people who from their comments had lost touch with her or who had not seen her for awhile - got to say goodbye; got to reflect what knowing her meant.

I hope she had chance to read these messages - if so I hope that they made her feel good about who and what she had been; I hope the messages would have eased her passing. But I suspect that being able to post these messages on Facebook was far more beneficial to her friends. In a time when so many of us are physically separated from each other, divorced from the important social connections that should be sustaining us - her friends got to reach out and validate, at least for a little while, both themselves and their friend. They got to share that with other people who were doing the same thing.

Perhaps, in spite of the silly uselessness of pictures of cute dogs and orcas, in spite of the endless re-posting of facts that are neither newsworthy or true, in spite of countless pictures of what people ate or where - Facebook does, at its best, have a use. Like all things - when we share real feelings - connections, regardless of the medium, are made.