There are times when a text message won’t cut it November 30, 2009
Posted by leslie20 in Uncategorized.Tags: digital media, funeral home, Internet, passed away, phone, Web site
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This past Thanksgiving weekend there were times when I wished my father’s friends had email or I had their cell phone numbers. But when I thought about it, this was the kind of news that should not be conveyed in such an impersonal way.
You see, my father passed away Saturday morning. It was rather sudden, but everytime he was hospitalized for pneumonia, and that has been several times the past couple of years, there was the possibility it would be fatal.
With all of the various digital media, none of them really is suitable for telling friends and family that someone they care about has died. To tell the many people in his address book that they have lost a dear friend, though, a phone call was much more personal than any “personal media” or written notice could have been. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of time, but in the end, many thanked me for calling and letting them know. In many ways, it was good for me, too, to hear what a true and loyal friend my father was to so many people, some of them who had worked for him and stayed in contact the past 20 years or more.
It has been interesting working with the funeral home for which I helped set up their first web site back in the late 1990s and to know that people will be able to post their condolences to my family via a medium that was just gearing up and is now ubiquitous in our society.
I think had he had a chance to experience the Internet, my father would have found it to be full of information on many of his favorite topics. He was a lifelong student, always studying different philosophies, the history of religions, country-specific histories and the origins of mythologies. He would have found a wealth of information on stocks he was watching or the expected performance of stocks he held. He would have found many things that frustrated him as well, but I think he would have appreciated the free exchange of ideas; or the ease with which he could have looked up the works and writings of what he considered to be the “great thinkers” of humanity.
To communicate his passing, this was not a time for digital messages. This news required the sound of a human voice.
I am so sorry to hear of your loss. I found myself in a similar situation earlier this year when my great Aunt passed away. Being 90 years old, those friends of hers that were still alive had no idea how to use the Internet, let alone have an email address. While the various forms of digital media are great for distributing information to many people in a short amount of time, there is a certain impersonal nature that comes with them as well. To add to your final remark, while digital messages may provide a means of communications, there is no substitute for the personal nature of a human voice in times of sorrow.
I too am very sorry to hear about your loss.
I completely agree that there are some things that can not be written. They need to be said in person or on the phone.
For instance, when my grandfather died, I stayed with my grandmother for a few days. The morning after he passed away we woke up early and started making phone calls to friends who lived far away. One of my grandfather’s Army buddies was away on vacation so my grandmother left a message explaining who she was and for the gentleman to please call her back. She was not comfortable just leaving a message saying he had died. She wanted to be able to give his friend to opportunity to ask questions on the spot.
Although text and emails can offer a chance to respond quickly, they are not personal enough. There are just some things that need to be spoken.