Social Medium: Communicating With the Dead on Facebook

Since Phil's death earlier this year, I have been learning about loss and grief. I have not truly sifted through all of the emotions that I am sure are somewhere inside of me; it's a work-in-progress. I go back and forth between denial and acceptance without much attention to the stages in between. I fear for the day when I really roll up my sleeves and deal with it. For now, I don't talk about it. I just write about it. One thing that I have experienced with all too much feeling is the intense desire to communicate with Phil. I miss the experiences, I miss being with him, seeing his face, etc., but most of all I miss telling him about things and hearing his feedback. I miss hearing his ideas and desires and telling him mine.

I dream of him often. It's not the sort of dream where I don't know or think he's dead. He is always dead in my dreams, but in my dreams he has always come back somehow. Once he faked his death. Once he was a miracle of science and came back to life 2 days after he drowned. Once (less pleasantly) he was a malignant spirit who was haunting me. Each of these led to a most unpleasant wake-up

The most dramatic dream was one where we were standing in the middle of a nondescript construction site. In the dream, it was right after Elijah was born (although I had this dream a couple of weeks ago) and two weeks before Phil died.

"I'm sorry your baby was born too early," Phil said.

"I'm sorry you're going to die in two weeks," I said.

We hugged.

He melted in my arms as I woke up, tears burning my eyes.

For all the agony that dream caused me, I could not help but feel that I had actually talked to Phil. I really felt like my spirit had created and sent information and his spirit had received it. Which brings me to the topic of this blog.

**Disclaimer**
For the record, I do not believe in the ghosts of the dead returning or that Phil in any sense was actually in my dream or actually talking to me. I'm sure some of those who read this might believe in such things, and I hope they enjoy the comfort that it gives them, but please don't lose the point of my post by mistaking my meaning. My purpose is only to reflect on a social phenomenon that I have noticed.
**End Disclaimer**

Sometimes people have Facebook accounts or other online presences. Sometimes those people die, and they leave those presences behind. A lot went into Phil's Facebook. Many of his likes, activities, pictures, and other bits of himself were put into a page that became a ready-made memorial site at his death. Suddenly that page was a place where mourners can remember and gawkers can gaze from the privacy of their computers. Acquaintances suddenly know him better than they did in life and the crowds gather to associate with this tragic slice of human drama.

After a while, the crowd subsided and people visited less and we were left with a core of Phil-junkies. We visit his site out of habit, injecting photos and jokes like a drug into our minds, committing new photos to memory and hoping some new part of him is exposed to feed the hearts of those that miss him desperately.

I think some of this comes from the fact that there is now a big, fat period on the end of his life. It's over; he will never do a new thing. Everything he has already done is all we will ever have of him, and Facebook contains a fairly comprehensive overview of the most recent years of his life.

His photo stands beside words he said, responses he gave, messages he sent. In a way, that little avatar feels like him. Statements he made are sealed with the stamp of that little thumbnail, as if it were a political ad: "This message approved by..."  We comment and talk about him as if he is still there, on the other side of the computer screen, waiting to respond. So we talk, and comment, and message, hoping that the little messages we send out into cyber space will be heard, much like a scientist sending messages blindly into outer space, hoping to make contact.

There are downsides to this pageantry. One is that there's not a day my heart doesn't stop because I've seen "Phil likes XYZ." Any activity with that little stamp of approval feels like he's still living in the internet, liking things and watching, reading, talking. Additionally, there are those who are offended by his Facebook still being active and people still "talking to him." They complain about this form of mourning; it looks to them like an unnecessary or unhealthy spectacle of people parading their sorrow.

My husband is under instruction to delete my Facebook after an appropriate interval if I die before him. I have no desire for my image to haunt those who loved me. Because that's what it feels like: it feels like the dead are haunting us in the internet. Faces of those we loved with interactions we shared float before our eyes in illuminated images, and photos of them take on a spectral quality.

 I have realized that communication is the richest way we have of building relationships. No wonder they suffer so badly when communication is weak. With Phil gone, communication with him is the biggest void that I have felt. I will visit and revisit his Facebook and send him messages until it dies or the internet ends or the Apocalypse happens, hoping with the tiniest sliver of hope that he'll say something.

Full of Hope

There is a particular sort of tragedy to unused baby things - especially when they are long unused. They have a sense of longing to them. They were made to hold little bodies, to delight little hands and eyes, to snuggle close to little faces. When a crib stands empty in a corner for months, it could just as well be a black hole or an endless abyss for all the warmth it adds to a room. When toys and towels and blankets sit in a pile in a closet, unopened, unpacked, they lose their color, their softness. The emptiness is heavier because of all the potential missed, all the day-dreams during pregnancy evaporated, all the expectations suspended. 

The three and a half months I spent sitting in a hospital room with Elijah feel like some distant, terrible nightmare - only three weeks into being home. We have fallen into a routine that is so comfortable, so natural, so right that I can scarcely remember all the weight that used to sit on my heart. Sometimes when I see him curled up in his bed, I feel a lump in my throat at how much I had longed for that sight. After months of the crib standing vacant and cold, it's a dream come true to see him safe and home. He adds such a warmth and presence to every room that I can't help but be filled with delight. I'm finally getting to be his mommy and not just his visitor.

When We Were Young: Day At The Beach, 2006

I Have a Brand New Life

I have a brand new life. It is much better than the old one. Here are some things I've learned about motherhood in the short week and half that I have been able to experience it so far:

- I may never sit down to a hot meal again. I feed the baby, make dinner, and by the time I can sit down and eat it, it's time to feed the baby again. 30 minutes later, dinner is cold, and I probably have spit-up on me.

- I may never sleep longer than 3 hours at a time again.

- The only being in the house that doesn't demand food is my mother. I spend my time around the clock feeding the baby, the husband, and the cat.

- When all you do is make food, you have way more opportunities to experiment in the kitchen. For example, for lunch today I made a spicy Thai carrot soup. For dinner on Wednesday, I roasted a whole chicken for the first time. It's so fun to finally have the time to really play with my cookbooks.

- I may never be sexy again.

- If it's edible, it's probably on my clothes.

- I forget basic routines every day. I have to remind myself to shower, then try to make it to the shower before I get distracted by something else I need to do.

- It does no good to beg the baby to go back to sleep. He doesn't understand me.

- I must get used to the baby giving me heart-breaking looks of betrayal whenever it's bath-time.

- The whole milk-production experience is way more gratifying when you have a baby around to eat it all.

- Elijah is a snacker. An ounce or two an hour would be lovely, thank you. No, really, I've had plenty. This way I get to wake up in an hour and play with you.

- He is a generally content baby. He does not cry for the sake of crying. If he's crying, something is wrong.

- He likes the turtle. Didn't have much to say about the monkey.

- He wakes up the moment he doesn't hear me. Good luck leaving the room for five minutes.

- His big, gummy smile makes everything alright.

- I can eat chocolate chips by the handful and nothing will happen to my waistline. I have a metabolism like a nuclear power plant.

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I have never felt more fulfilled as a woman as I do now as Adam's wife and Elijah's mom. There's something about it all that just clicks for me. I like my new job. My boobs have a purpose. I get to cook a lot (which is something I really enjoy). It's ok that I'm tired all the time because I'm tired doing the only thing that I have to do. Some people might think I'm being medieval, but I think of it more as being primal. I make food. I feed my young. I've reproduced myself and given my mate a son. I dunno. It's empowering, in an odd way. I'm the mama bear. Roar. 

Actually And Completely Happy

This is the face of True Happiness

Elijah was scheduled to come home on Tuesday. We thought the nurses were going to call us around noon and we would come get him at 2 pm. We didn't know for certain, yet, if he was going to be actually coming home. I didn't want to get my hopes up and for them to say, "No, he didn't do well last night, so we need him to stay another day" (which happens all the time. I overheard people in the waiting room talking about how their homecoming had been pushed back over and over for the last two weeks.). Trying to keep my mind off of it until we knew for sure, I went to the store and ran a few errands on Tuesday morning, just so the day wasn't a waste in case it got cancelled.

At 12:30, I was worried because I hadn't heard anything yet. I called the nurse on my way home to see if we had the green light.

Nurse: "Oh, yeah, he's supposed to go home, where are you?"
Me: "Oh, I thought you were going to call us at noon."
Nurse: "Oh, I thought you were COMING at noon. Come get your baby!"

So, I rushed into the house with bags of groceries and yelled for Adam to come help me. It was almost a magical moment. When I was pregnant, I had envisioned us rushing out the door when I would have gone into labor, giddy with excitement and nervousness. We were robbed of that moment when I was induced, so it was almost like we were getting to experience it after all. We hurried to put away the groceries, sticking them in almost any empty space (over the next couple of days I had to recover some things that were thrown in odd places.). We rushed out the door... and had to gas up, which took an excruciatingly long time.

At last, we arrived at the hospital and rushed to his room for the very last time. We filled out the paper work, signed the document that said we were receiving the right baby, and packed up all of our things that we had left in that room over the last 3 1/2 months. Adam went downstairs with arms full of bags to bring the car around, and I went down with the nurse and Elijah.

He was the man of the hour. A bunch of the nurses came around to say good-bye, and the security guard, people on the elevator, and people in front of the hospital kept coming up and looking at him. We got him into his little car seat and drove him home.

I had expected my emotions to run out of me like a waterfall. I thought that it would be too much happiness, that I wouldn't be able to bear it. I didn't feel that way at all, though. I felt only a wonderful sensation of being complete. As Adam drove us home and I sat next to Elijah's car seat, watching him fall asleep, I felt a warm satisfaction that all was finally right with the world, because, for the first time in almost 4 months, it finally is.

Sigh.

My husband is playing a video game on our futon, and my baby is curled up next to him, asleep.

I'm too busy basking in it to properly update, so I will give a fuller post this weekend.

I am completely content.

All About Pumping And Some Good News

Elijah is supposed to come home next week! If everything goes well, that is.

Now I'm nervous because I've never had a baby before, and as eager as I am to have him home, now I'm afraid I'll kill him with bad parenting. At least at the hospital, there's a nurse within a moment's reach if I do something wrong... now I'll be on my own.

I picture changing him, giving him a bath, walking him in his stroller, and feeding him all the time so he's never hungry again.

He's been in the hospital for 14 weeks. Now, at the risk of grossing some people out, I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back for using a breast pump for 14 whole weeks. I have to pump every three hours, except at night, when I pump every four or five hours. Each session takes about 20-30 minutes, and I do it 7 times a day - it feels like all I do, sometimes. I can't go anywhere for long before I have to get back home and pump, unless it's at the hospital where they have a pump on the premises. I might also mention that pumping can be and has been painful (you can look up "instruments of torture" in the dictionary and find a picture of the Medela Lactina®).

I have stuck with it for two reasons: one is that I knew from the start that I wanted to breastfeed. It never occurred to me not to. Some women are flat unable to breastfeed, even without their babies in the hospital, and most women can't pump for the length of time I've been able to. I have been blessed to be physically able to keep up my milk with a pump, and that is through no merit of my own - it's just the way my body behaves. So, I was able to do what I really hoped I could.

The second reason that I stuck with it is that it seems Elijah is unable to tolerate anything except breast milk. They tried him on formula and two kinds of milk fortifiers and all three gave him diarrhea. It has given me great pleasure to be able to give him the only thing he can eat, and I'd do it 14 more weeks if I had to.


Did I mention the weight loss? Yeah. That's pretty cool. I already weigh less than I did when I got pregnant, probably since I produce almost 40 oz of breast milk a day (that's 1/3 a gallon). Because, apparently, I'm part cow.