I could not stop for Facebook, and Facebook did NOT kindly stop for me

- ( Apologies to Emily Dickinson...)

On the day,  and at the time of my mother’s death… 9 July , 2019 , 8.30am... 
​I could not stop for Facebook,  and Facebook did not kindly stop for me…
And that Facebook post holds not just himself,
but also Myrtle’s immortality
 
For the outpouring of his grief- he spared no haste…
9 July, 2019 ,  10.30 am…
My mother’s passing still hovering on the edge of then and now
He updated  a profile photo of he and she
With words that read
I always miss you Myrtle
 
Meanwhile my sister and I had put away our grief
Our mourning and our crying too
For the sake of Civility
 
Our first task to let Myrtle’s sisters and family know
That she had passed the setting sun
So that they did not find out
Second hand or publically.
 
 
While  we were calling people who have spent
Their lifetime loving Myrtle
His friends… strangers to Myrtle
Were publically, quivering for him
A sanitised sorrow -digitally!
 
While those who had spent a lifetime loving and knowing Myrtle
Had not yet even cried their first tears of heart,  felt grief or had time to process their loss
Myrtle was first turned toward Eternity
Not by Death and  His carriage at a  slow, mournful pace 
But by a Facebook post for strangers, 
To lament her passing in haste.

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About this post: Some might know /remember that the focus of some of my craftivist and art work around memory, story and identity focuses on how social and digital media impacts and shapes our interactions with time/space/place/self and others.. 

​​I understand that grief and mourning is not an easy topic to navigate or for people to consider, or even talk about and that at a time of grief we process differently. This post is not meant as anything other than a personal reflection on the impact of social and digital media on our grieving and mourning: time, space, place, and process .