A Facebook 'Friend' Has Died-Feeling A Bit Strange

[+ Gar1eth]

I have about 250 Facebook friends. I used to have about 320. But I've pruned. The majority are people I actually know. A large number of them are people from my hometown. I was not really a popular guy. Our main claim to being 'friends' is knowing each other during 12 years of school. I also am 'friends' with people from college. But again the majority of them, well while I may have been in organizations with them, we weren't really friends-only friendly acquaintances. In fact I have defriended some of them lately as they have never responded back to me.

 

Also among my mix of 'friends' are relatives-no further from me than either 1st cousins once removed or second cousins (which while called different things in trying to figure out relatedness may have the same genetic relationship to me), some guys I've had hook-ups with, a few friends of friends that I don't really know, a few former colleagues from when I worked, and about 4 or 5 escorts or former escorts that I never mention on FB how we met.

 

 

Late last week by chance I happened to go to a Facebook page of a 'friend' (let's call him Tom) that I didn't really know well, and found out he had died the weekend before Labor Day. To tell the truth the reason I knew him is that we had hooked up once about 5 years ago-probably from either Grindr or Bear411. I think it was only once. I can tell you it wasn't that successful a hook-up. Junior wasn't very perky, and I wasn't able to top him. We did go hot tubbing (his) and cuddle for a bit.

 

I can't remember if we ever met again after that. I know we had a friend in common ( another very occasional f-ckbuddy of mine) and I had texted Tom once to try and figure out the other guy's home address. We may have texted a few other times. But it's not as if I really knew him well. Going by the Facebook responses he was a very nice guy. And actually that's my sense of him from our hook-up-that he was a nice guy. I moved within 6 months of our hook-up. Plus he lived about 30 miles from me before I moved out of state. Otherwise I could have seen us being closer friends.

 

One thing I found interesting about this guy over the years- he had a wide circle of friends. Let me explain. I don't know why. But often I will go thru the Friends List of my friends. In the early days of me being on Facebook, I did this to see if there was anyone I knew that I wanted to send a Friend Request to. Now I do it more as a 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon search. Often my Facebook friend and I will have no friends in common. But they will have friends who have friends in common with me. I'm often surprised by who these people I don't know will have in common with me. Over the last year or so, I've found that four or five times Tom was the friend in common of people living in say California (I've never lived there and the the main Facebook friend I have there is more of a penpal-someone I've never met in person.), Florida (same as for California), Germany, and Canada (definitely never lived out of the country and don't know many people who do).

 

So this is a very weird feeling seeing that Tom has died. I'm a little melancholy about it. Possibly part of it is that we were the same age. And I'm not sure whether or not anyone I've been intimate with has died before (it's possible there might have been an escort or two. I know there have been a few escorts that I contacted without ever meeting who have subsequently died). Plus from looking at his Facebook page it looks like he posted something either a day or two before he died-or possibly the day of.

 

In some ways it feels the same as when I hear a Forum Member has passed. But in this case, it's a little more intense as I had actually met him. I don't think I really knew Tom well enough to need condolences sent to me. But I am sad I didn't get to know him better.

 

Gman

[+ VeryHappyCustomer]

I'm sorry for your loss, Gman.

[+ oldNbusted]

And I'm not sure whether or not anyone I've been intimate with has died before

 

With this context, I think it's only natural to feel as you do, you need some time to process.

[+ Robster]

I'm very sorry for your loss.

 

And no offense, but I hate when people put their Facebook friends in quotation marks. I have about 350 Facebook friends, many of whom I haven't met in person, but I feel as close to some of them as people I do know in person, in some cases even closer. We talk every day, share things that are going on in our lives, etc. They offered so much emotional support to me and Wayne when I was in the hospital last year. I'm proud to call them my friends!

 

Rob

[+ WilliamM]

I have a very different approach to Facebook, especially cutting loose people who were once good friends yet I no longer have anything in common.

 

The yuge exception would be someone whom I lost touch & really liked at one time -- and it was my fault we lost contact.

[+ Gar1eth]

I'm very sorry for your loss.

 

And no offense, but I hate when people put their Facebook friends in quotation marks. I have about 350 Facebook friends, many of whom I haven't met in person, but I feel as close to some of them as people I do know in person, in some cases even closer. We talk every day, share things that are going on in our lives, etc. They offered so much emotional support to me and Wayne when I was in the hospital last year. I'm proud to call them my friends!

 

Rob

 

I'm a bit different. The problem being I'm kind of a solitary guy. Some of it is just naturally me. Some of it is circumstance. Of course I engender 90% or more of the circumstances by being me. But for most of my life, I've not made friends easily. Consequently the number I have of what I consider to be true friends in my life currently-is few to none. I've had more in the past. But circumstances again. That doesn't mean I don't value a lot of the people I am in contact with on Facebook. But for me to just blithely call them 'friends' when often that word means more than what the majority of these people are to me-well I wanted the relationship I had with these people to be understood better.

 

I'm very glad you feel close to your Facebook friends.

 

Gman

[+ WilliamM]

I agree with you G-man concerning "friends," unless individuals have really become friends

[+ azdr0710]

I think what you wrote @Gar1eth in the OP may itself already be a healthy, therapeutic step for you regarding the death and your facing what it means to you......

[+ Kufrol]

This thread reminds me of Robert Woodruff Anderson's [I Never Sang For My Father] quotation:

 

“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.”

[+ FreshFluff]

Sorry about your friend's passing, Gman. I hope that reading his own FB friends' responses to his passing helps.

[+ Gar1eth]

This thread reminds me of Robert Woodruff Anderson's [I Never Sang For My Father] quotation:

 

“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.”

 

This is very true.

 

I don't deal with death well. I'm probably still even more sensitive than my normal due to my Dad having passed away in April.

 

It wasn't a good late winter to early spring for me and my extended family. My sister-in-law's father died at the end of February. He was 92 and hadn't been doing great. But on the other hand it wasn't expected as he wasn't acutely ill at the time.

 

The reason I bring this up is that at the funeral for my sister-in-law's father his children and grandchildren got up to speak about what made him special to them. My family had never really done this for my grandparents years ago or my aunt just a few years back. But my brother thought it was something very nice. My sister did too. So they decided we should do it at my Dad's funeral. I wasn't that fond of it. I don't mind speaking in public. But I have always had problems putting thoughts down on paper. I was horrible at writing reports in school. But obviously I couldn't not say something for my Dad if my two siblings were going to. I would never have forgiven myself. As it turned out, I did think of an anecdote that showed how much my Dad cared for my Mom even in the midst of Alzheimer's taking so much away from him.

 

One of my 1st cousins-didn't speak. But he sent my brother the following poem. I think he told my brother that it had comforted him when his mother (my aunt) died several years ago. I'm sure many of you know this poem. It's called Death Is Nothing At All. My brother read it as part of his speech at the funeral. I'll copy it below for those who might not be familiar with it. It's a beautiful poem.

 

But -and this is the point of this long post-@Kufrol's

quote from Robert Woodruff Anderson put me in mind of my thoughts about this poem. I'll admit to not feeling things as many others do. I'll also admit that Scott-Holland's poem is beautiful. But it doesn't comfort me at all. It depresses the heck out of me. It does nothing to assuage my feelings of loss for my father or anyone else that I've lost. I wish that the poem did. I also wish I believed in heavenly afterlife. I don't think deep down I do. Or maybe deep down I do, and it's on the surface that I don't.

 

 

As I said at the start of this post, I don't deal with death well.

 

Gman

 

 

 

Death Is Nothing At All

By Henry Scott-Holland

 

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

 

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

 

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

 

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

 

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

 

More Henry Scott-Holland

 

 

 

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/death-is-nothing-at-all-by-henry-scott-holland

[+ purplekow]

This seems a perfect example of the computer age relationships. Intimacy and isolation in the same relationship. You have friends you have never met or who you met once or twice, which in another age, would have left your life with barely a notice. Now, these people who are essentially strangers, they do not know your middle name, your favorite color, the name of your third grade teacher or they know only that thing and nothing else, but there is still a connectedness, a camaraderie that leads you to feel a loss in the passing greater than the gain in your life from knowing him. The feelings are real, the loss more spiritual than real. You life is unchanged by his passing except for you grief in knowing of it.

[+ WilliamM]

Now, these people who are essentially strangers, they do not know your middle name, your favorite color, the name of your third grade teacher or they know only that thing and nothing else, but there is still a connectedness, a camaraderie that leads you to feel a loss in the passing greater than the gain in your life from knowing him.

 

Unless you live in the same place all your life, how would a long-time friend you met in college know your third grade teacher? In fact I did mention my third grade teacher, but not by name, in a long-ago PM with @Kenny. That teacher, Margaret Mason, realized I was being abused by my dad. I was totally lost as to what to say when she asked me. This was in 1953, long before child abuse was a public issue.

 

But, I shall always remember her kindness and keeping in contact with me until the 8th grade.

[mike carey]

Sorry to hear of this Gman. It illustrates a curious aspect of the age, where we are coming to terms with the conditions of wider but not always deeper bonds of connection.

And no offense, but I hate when people put their Facebook friends in quotation marks.

I understand your dislike of this phenomenon, Rob, especially given the heartwarming response you receive from so many people last year. To me, 'Facebook friend' is implicitly in quotation marks because it carries a different weight to 'friend' in some other contexts, in the same way that 'penfriend' carried a different weight in another age. I wouldn't use quotes, but I can understand why some feel the need to do so.

[+ Italiano]

 

 

 

Death Is Nothing At All

By Henry Scott-Holland

 

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

 

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

 

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

 

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

 

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

 

More Henry Scott-Holland

 

 

 

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/death-is-nothing-at-all-by-henry-scott-holland

 

I sent this poem (beautiful!!) translated into Italian to my mom when my dad all of a sudden died 22 years ago.

She loved it too. It has helped her to heal a bit.

[+ purplekow]

Unless you live in the same place all your life, how would a long-time friend you met in college know your third grade teacher? In fact I did mention my third grade teacher, but not by name, in a long-ago PM with @Kenny. That teacher, Margaret Mason, realized I was being abused by my dad. I was totally lost as to what to say when she asked me. This was in 1952, long before child abuse was a public issue.

 

But, I shall always remember her kindness and keeping in contact with me until the 8th grade.

Literal and figurative.

[+ sniper]

Sorry to hear about your friend's passing.

 

But I disagree that everyone you call "friend" needs to be on a particularly high level. That's both being kind of pedantic and a formula for being alone all the time. At this point everyone knows that being a facebook friend is really meeting the threshold of acquaintance. You can always keep people on your friends list but "unfollow" them if you don't want to see all their postings taking up your newsfeed.

 

Regarding how it's interesting to see people you have in common with strangers - remember you probably "know" a couple of thousand people, each of whom themselves know a couple thousand people. multiply that out and there are several million people only separated from you by one degree, and a billion or so by two.(actuall number is less due to overlap in these numbers, but you get the idea). You can probably connect any two people in the industrialized world in 6 hops or less, especially if anyone you know is in politics in some fashion.

[+ Gar1eth]

I sent this poem (beautiful!!) translated into Italian to my mom when my dad all of a sudden died 22 years ago.

She loved it too. It has helped her to heal a bit.

 

I'm glad it helped both of you. I wish it affected me that way.

 

Gman

[BasketBaller]

No matter how well you know someone on Facebook, whether they are indeed personal friends or online friends, it's still a connection, and the death of such a person is a loss. If it is someone you know only slightly, you've lost the chance to get to know them better. A potentially deeper relationship will never happen. Of course it leaves you melancholy. And if it's someone your own age, it's a reminder of mortality, which no matter your beliefs about an afterlife, is sobering.

 

One of my grandfathers died when I was 11. The next death of anyone close to me was my wife's, when I was 27. In the last 10 years or so many elderly relatives, and a few friends and relatives who were not elderly, have died. I have learned not to question grief, since age or physical condition don't make it easier to accept, at least for me. To mourn the loss of even a casual friend seems to me normal, and maybe healthy.

 

I'm sorry for your loss.

[+ Charlie]

I found the poem very moving, not only because I am a hyper-sentimental type, but because I am anticipating the death of a very dear friend who is in hospice, and the voice in the poem expresses what I feel about her.

 

I am not on Facebook, so I have no "friends" there, but there are posters here whom I think of as "friends," even though I know them only through their posts and our private "conversations." If they stop posting, I never know what happened to them; I am sorry they have disappeared, but I feel no emotion. Sometimes I learn of the death of someone whom I knew personally and thought of as a friend long ago; I realize that my sadness in that situation is usually provoked by the sense of loss of a connection to my past rather than than the actual death of the person. As for feelings about the death of someone with whom I was once sexually intimate, I worked through that during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, when I couldn't go to a showing of the quilt without being assaulted by memories on all sides.

 

I think it is wrong to expect family members or close friends to speak at a funeral if they do not feel comfortable doing so, for whatever reason. At the funeral of the mother of a close friend, my friend's extremely competitive twin sister gave a long and beautiful eulogy, but my friend was so choked with grief she could hardly speak when it was her turn. Many more people offered her twin condolences and praise after the service. I was probably one of the few in attendance who knew that my friend had taken care of her mother during the last year, while her twin had simply offered advice from a distance. I saw the same dynamic at my best friend's memorial service, when his sister gave a very short comment, while his brother gave a long, smooth eulogy. My friend was in home hospice care for three months, during which his brother visited him once for an afternoon, while his sister gave up two years of future vacation time from work to stay with him for part of every month. Too often family speeches become a kind of competition that are judged on their delivery.

[+ Gar1eth]

 

I think it is wrong to expect family members or close friends to speak at a funeral if they do not feel comfortable doing so, for whatever reason. At the funeral of the mother of a close friend, my friend's extremely competitive twin sister gave a long and beautiful eulogy, but my friend was so choked with grief she could hardly speak when it was her turn. Many more people offered her twin condolences and praise after the service. I was probably one of the few in attendance who knew that my friend had taken care of her mother during the last year, while her twin had simply offered advice from a distance. I saw the same dynamic at my best friend's memorial service, when his sister gave a very short comment, while his brother gave a long, smooth eulogy. My friend was in home hospice care for three months, during which his brother visited him once for an afternoon, while his sister gave up two years of future vacation time from work to stay with him for part of every month. Too often family speeches become a kind of competition that are judged on their delivery.

 

Well sometimes unfortunately as they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's easy to understand why someone who does a better-longer eulogy might receive more in the way of public acknowledgement. It's human nature. And maybe my family would have thought ill of me privately if I hadn't spoken. But it was more the pressure I put on myself that if my siblings and nieces and nephews could speak that I needed to be part of that too.

 

If I have to envision doing the same when my mother passes-and strangely enough I haven't really thought of that until now-I don't know if I'll have any anecdotes to relate. I think there's a good chance if I can get any words out at all, I'll probably say something about how much I love her, and I'm going to miss her forever. Two or three sentences tops.

 

Gman

[+ purplekow]

Well sometimes unfortunately as they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's easy to understand why someone who does a better-longer eulogy might receive more in the way of public acknowledgement. It's human nature. And maybe my family would have thought ill of me privately if I hadn't spoken. But it was more the pressure I put on myself that if my siblings and nieces and nephews could speak that I needed to be part of that too.

 

If I have to envision doing the same when my mother passes-and strangely enough I haven't really thought of that until now-I don't know if I'll have any anecdotes to relate. I think there's a good chance if I can get any words out at all, I'll probably say something about how much I love her, and I'm going to miss her forever. Two or three sentences tops.

 

Gman

Those two sentences say it all and eloquently so.

[+ Kufrol]

Less is more; remember, The Gettysburg Address took only a couple of minutes tops to deliver.