Dej Knuckey: Mourning in the Digital Age

Dej Knuckey shares about how grieving has changed with the rise of social media.

I’ve reached the age of parents dying. Every week, more Facebook posts mourn losses — for I’m also of the age where Facebook is the thread connecting friends too distant, or too busy.

They post photos of lost parents in their prime, or of their faces lined with years. They share stories of how they left their mark on their families, their friends, their corner of the world.

Some admit relief as a sad, slow goodbye is finally finished. A few mourn that now they’ll never get the parenting they craved.

I lost my first parent before my memories began, and I figured what I didn’t know, I couldn’t miss. I understood friends who lost parents in their teens or college years — years when you need a parent to call on, or to fall on — felt a deep wound that I didn’t.

But I could never relate to the void friends spoke of when they lost a parent after they themselves were fully-fledged adults, many with their own nest already empty.

In February, a month before my sixtieth birthday, two before her eighty-seventh, I stole my mother away for a night at a fancy spa hotel a couple of hours from her home in Melbourne, Australia.

As I helped her into the hot springs, I feared the day I’d be torn between my California life and familial obligations in the country of my birth. Her body was aging — knees stiffening, prescriptions multiplying — though her mind and crowded calendar showed no sign of slowing.

When I flew home, there was no hint a fatal stroke was waiting in the wings.

Just four days later, it was my turn to explore the contours of that void. As I traveled back to Australia to plan her funeral, I selected some fresh photos and started my Facebook post: “I’m devastated to share that my Mum died suddenly yesterday…” With a Perspective, I’m Dej Knuckey.

Dej Knuckey is an energy journalist and climate fiction author who lives in Marin.