95three

On Sunday, I sent a Friend Request to a dead man.

I didn’t know he was on Facebook otherwise I would’ve friended him a long time ago.

I didn’t know if he was dead, either. I just knew it was a strong possibility.

I sent a friend request because I saw some other random FB status updates from some other friends that suggested he had died. I was sort of freaking out and worried and I quickly sent him a friend request so that I could...what? Ask him if he was dead?

As soon as I hit ‘send request’ I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ All I could think of was my friend request sitting unopened in his FB window. In my mind’s eye I saw a pile of unopened FB requests sitting with red numbers on his profile page. I wondered what happens to your FB account after you die. If people you love go in with your passwords and start deleting everything. I wonder if they go to the messages and read through them, crying over the words written by the someone they loved so much that now was gone.

Immediately thereafter a text message confirmed he had died.

I withdrew my friend request.