Tuesday
THE DIGITAL WAKE
On Logging On to Grieve
For most of the year, my social media presence is that of a ghost. The apps are buried in a folder on the last screen of my phone, notifications silenced, the endless scroll a distant, unappealing hum. It is a space I associate with the trivialities I wish to escape: gender reveals, political screeds from distant relatives, and the manicured gardens of other people’s accomplishments. I don't need it. I don't want it.
Until I do.
The need arrives with the brutal suddenness of a late-night phone call. It comes with the words, "Are you sitting down?" It is the immediate, gut-punching aftermath of loss. And in that disorienting fog of shock and sorrow, a strange, primal instinct kicks in. I find myself reaching for my phone, my thumb navigating with a muscle memory I didn't know I possessed, tapping open that blue and white icon. Suddenly, I am not just a user; I am a digital mourner, and this platform I resent has become the only place I want to be.
This is the great, bizarre paradox of grieving in the 21st century: we turn to the most curated, artificial, and often isolating of spaces to process the most brutally real and connective of human experiences. The question is, why? And how does this flawed, imperfect vessel manage to provide such profound comfort?
The psychology begins with the need for proof. In the immediate aftermath of a death, reality itself feels thin, like a photograph that’s been overexposed. The world keeps moving—cars are still driving, the grocery store is still open—but your personal world has stopped dead. The social media profile of the person you’ve lost becomes an anchor to reality. There they are. Not were, but are. In photos from a vacation last summer, in a silly status update from 2014, in a shared article about a band they loved. The profile is a vibrant, chaotic, and irrefutable archive of a life lived. Scrolling through it is not an act of morbid curiosity; it is an act of confirmation. They were here. This was real. Look at all this life. It is a shield against the abstract horror of absence.
This digital space then transforms from an archive into a gathering place. Traditionally, when someone died, the community would physically gather. People would bring casseroles, sit shiva, hold a wake. Neighbors would cluster on the front lawn, speaking in hushed tones. Grief, while intensely personal, was a communal event. It was public. You were allowed to be seen in your sadness, and in being seen, you felt less alone.
Social media has become the digital front lawn. The deceased’s profile wall becomes the destination for a modern pilgrimage. A post from the family announcing the death is followed by a cascade of comments, each one a virtual hand on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” “I’ll never forget the time when…” “They were such a wonderful person.” Each comment, from a college roommate, a former colleague, a childhood neighbor, is a small testament. Together, they form a collaborative eulogy, painting a picture of the person that is richer and more multifaceted than any single individual could have known. You learn small, wonderful things: that your quiet uncle was a beloved mentor to a young coworker; that your high school friend secretly sent encouraging messages to people she barely knew. You are not just mourning the person you lost; you are meeting them again through the eyes of everyone they touched. The isolation of your pain is broken by the sheer volume of shared sorrow.
This is where the comfort, so desperately needed, is found. Grief is not linear, and it does not respect business hours. It is a wave that crashes at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. In those moments, you cannot call your friends or family. But you can open your phone. You can read the stories on their wall. You can look at their pictures and see them smiling. The profile is an asynchronous vigil, always lit, always waiting. It allows you to dip your toes into the waters of remembrance whenever you need to, without burdening anyone, without having to perform your grief for anyone else. It is a private conversation held in a public square.
Of course, we must be anti-social media to be truly pro-grief. This system is a crude, unintentional tool for mourning, and its flaws are often painfully apparent. The algorithm, blind and unfeeling, does not understand death. It will suggest you invite your deceased friend to an event. It will create a "memory" slideshow of your photos together, set to cheerful, upbeat music. It will surface their birthday with a prompt to "Tell them you're thinking of them!" These moments are like digital landmines, capable of detonating your composure with a single, thoughtless notification. They are cruel glitches in the code of our remembrance, reminding us that we are grieving inside a machine built for engagement, not empathy.
And yet, we persist. We persist because we are adaptable creatures who will use any tool at our disposal to navigate the wilderness of loss. We have taken a platform designed for self-promotion and repurposed it into a sanctuary for memory. The act of logging on when someone dies is not an obsession with the platform itself, but an obsession with connection—to the person who is gone, and to the community of people they left behind.
It is a messy, imperfect, and deeply human thing to do. It is a testament to our stubborn need to gather in the dark, even if the only light we have is the cold, blue glow of a screen. And when the initial, terrible wave of grief begins to recede, we can log off again, leaving the digital ghost town behind, knowing the vigil will be kept until we need to return
