Life and death on Facebook

Someone I know just posted on Facebook that their son has been killed in a car crash. Their expression of grief in this context took me aback. I sat here stunned.

This is someone I haven't had contact with for years and for me to respond with a Facebook comment in such circumstances seemed wrong.

But then I realised that here was a fellow human being in frankly unimaginable pain reaching out. Who was I not to reach back .....

Comments

[Sylwia Presley]

Terrible! I cannot even imagine the pain! I guess we all express our grief in many ways - some of us prefer to be quiet, some need to be vocal and ask for support. I remember the day of Smolensk airplane crash, which was a test for me - my parents happened to be in the UK and picked up the morning news - we did not really know what was going on. Twitter (and Polish mirror engine Blip.pl) gave me the right insights very quickly, but I also desperately wanted to share the shock of first not knowing what's going on, and later realizing we have just lost all those people, and did not know how it's going to affect Polish-Russian relationships...so I blogged about it for Global Voices (together with language support of our Russian colleagues there) and felt a bit better. I felt I acted upon something which is irreversible and I could not stay quiet. I felt I wanted to let the world know what is going on in my other 'home' but some of my friends from Polish GV made it clear they are unable to even speak up....for them grief meant silence.