on grief and privacy in the digital age ...

Two weeks before my beloved died, a dear friend lost her love in a freak boating accident in the United States.

I learned about it via Facebook, in a raw message from her as they continued to search for him and she prayed he would come home safely.

My beloved and I discussed it, and he initially expressed discomfort with sharing such news via social media. Although he was almost 10 years younger than me and studied computer science at university, my career in journalism and constant travel meant I was much more adept with social media than he.

I told him  I had been troubled the first time I received news of a death via Facebook but over the years since had come to realise that, once immediate family and closest friends were notified, it was the most efficient way of notifying others, without the pain of having to go through that one by one.

Memorial pages and accounts are also a way for those left behind to keep their loved ones' memories alive, in the same way writing keeps my memories alive. My young cousins often visit their late father's page to leave him messages and tell him what they are doing. A dear friend still leaves messages on a chat app for another dear friend we lost this year.

It's the same as visiting a grave and talking to those interred within but, as we tend to travel more these days, it's a way of taking that grave with us.

He considered it from that perspective and agreed.

And then to privacy, and we all have different perspectives on that. As a writer and journalist, I am accustomed to living in the public arena, so I try to choose my words carefully in whatever I write on social media.

Others are more guarded and protective of their privacy. My beloved was incredibly open, honest and forthright so my first blog post after his death was also open, honest and forthright.

In the rawness of my new loss, I failed to take into account that his family may not wish to be that open and I linked the post to his Facebook page. They asked that I remove it.

Out of respect for them, and the enormity of their loss also, I complied, and have since refrained from referring to him by name in my posts, but writing is how I best process anything and this rawness and trauma requires a lot of processing.

I'm learning we all go through the phases in different orders and at our own times. Some leap directly to anger, at the universe in general, while I am still working through denial, despite being there for his passing and the aftermath of medical personnel and police.

I still wake in the early hours of each day expecting to find him beside me and each day have to come to the realisation that will never happen again.

I process that pain by writing about him, by writing to him, by sharing stories about him not only with our mutual friends here but with my support network around the world.

I wish there was a page I could visit to read such stories from his many friends whom I never got to meet or talk to.