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DEATH | TECHNOLOGY
A Death on Social Media Smacks Me in the Face Once Again
We now experience way more loss than we normally would due to social media. I don’t know if this is good or bad. I know that it makes me sad more often, and it makes me realize how unpredictable life is, how it can be here one day and gone the next.
My classmates are dying.
I followed my high school classmate Nate’s cancer treatment progress on Facebook. I was rooting for him. I wrote words of encouragement in the comments section. The prognosis didn’t look good. He had brain cancer and it impacted his speech, but he and his wife kept a positive attitude.
They wrote about the wins in his battle and they journaled about the entire ordeal. I saw photos of his treatments, photos of him surrounded by his wife and children, and photos of him sleeping due to the exhaustion he experienced from the disease. Then, I saw the photos of him when he began to decline. His wife wrote long posts, detailing his condition. Then, I saw the post announcing his death. His pain was over. He lost his battle. I cried for a long time.
Then, I saw on Facebook that another classmate, Joann, died of cancer. She was a friend of mine in high school. We had classes together and she was so cute and so full of life. Now she was gone…
