By Bill DIxon
As I scroll through the deceased’s Facebook page, this is what I find:
“We missed you in social studies today 😉 Luv u always!”
“smokn phat blunts in heven im sur :)”
“what about prom lol! awww were goin to miss you”
It was a car accident. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt or maybe she was. It doesn’t really matter. The universe spun the giant globe and brought its finger down with a thud over the Ventura Boulevard exit on the 405. Then, zap.
The universe doesn’t flinch before giving the globe another spin.
Now I’m scrolling through a dead person’s Facebook feed, paging through hundreds of comments. Some are nice. Some are thoughtful. Some googled “good quotes about friend dying,” copying and pasting their greeting card sentiments onto the improvised digital memorial.
But most were written as if she wasn’t even gone. A profusion of “see you later :)” and “LOL you’re going to miss homecoming! c u soon!”, completely detached from the reality of the situation. Maybe the relationship they had with the girl stemmed from a place of total detachment. Maybe the totality of their relationship resided in the text messages, tweets and status updates. Maybe they would have been just as surprised to see her on their doorstep yesterday as they would if they saw her on their doorstep today.
To me this would be like going to a funeral, walking to up to the casket and knocking on it, “Steve, I know you’re in there. You owe me 40 bucks, asshole, and I’m not letting them bury you until I get that…Father O’Connell, get your hands off me, I know he’s in there.”
I’m not interested in writing an “in my day” critique of contemporary American youth culture because, ultimately, I think they’ll be fine and I’m not removed enough to feel nostalgic about something that happened less than a decade ago.
But this does raise the question, what is going to happen to me when I die?
I don’t mean an afterlife, who cares about that.
I’m talking about my Facebook page, Twitter account and my writing. What if my last status update is something like “No seriously, who let the fucking dogs out?” or some snarky quasi-intellectual remark like, “In conclusion, i’m avoiding cliches like the plague.” What if that’s the last thing on my internet headstone, carelessly carved into digital granite at the top of an online presence I spent so many years so carefully curating.
I also have concerns as a comedy writer. What if my family decided to read some of my work at the church service as posthumous tribute to my illustrious comedy writing career? What if their favorite work I did was some horrible celebrity hit piece for a college humor website?
I cringe imagining my grandmother speaking to a crowded church with mascara running down her face, her voice reverberating through the chapel, “Lindsey Lohan is looking for a personal assistant. Really?” Choking back tears she turns the page in her hand, “Lindsey Lohan doesn’t need a personal assistant, she needs a fucking AA sponsor…now I would like to read a verse from the book of Romans…”
I scroll back to the top of her Facebook page and click the box to write a comment. I watch the cursor blink in the box for a moment. I click out of the box. Now, grey text appears:
“Write something…”
I open a word document on my desktop and begin typing.
“As I scroll through the deceased’s Facebook page, this is what I find…”
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