Forgetting and Letting Go in the Age of Facebook

Upon hearing of the death of computer/internet pioneer Steven Jobs, my second thought after marveling at his genius and impact, was to wonder if anyone would take his personal Facebook page down. I wonder because, according to my wife, friend and deceased ministerial colleague Suzanne Meyer’s still hasn’t been. Suzanne pops up from time to time on my wife’s page, with the standard Facebook invitation to my wife to suggest a friend to her. Though our grief has continued for a year and half, and her absence remains, there is something disturbing in this. We will never forget her but her presence is gone from us.

It is a kind of “reverse oubliette.” Years ago we took a church children’s choir to England for a tour that included a visit to Warwick Castle where there is a famous oubliette. An oubliette is a tiny, secret underground dungeon-for-one accessed by a trapdoor in the castle floor, the cell’s ceiling. It was named this, from the Latin meaning “to forget,” because a prisoner was thrown in there, never to be heard from again. Oblivion. The torture must have been excruciating. Keep the prisoner well-fed and forgotten. He knew it was as if he didn’t exist though he still did.

It is as if she never died, but she has. She doesn't know it but we do. Fortunately she is no longer in the pain that her cancer brought on. But, the electronic age won’t let her be. It hounds her to seek friendships with the living from the grave, which become teasers to us: What is she up to? Is her news good? Where are the pictures from the land she’s gone to?

It is macabre. And it hurts each time her picture appears in the rotation of Facebook friends. She is now a part of the “memory” that is God, and her peaceful return unto His bosom was welcomed by her cancer ridden body and her beautiful spirit. We will not forget her as long as we live, but why can’t the electronic age let go, whose memory is long, though the meaning it once carried forgotten?