Why It Matters: Sharing grief in the Facebook era

Last week we published an account of coping with bereavement which touched many readers with its emotional honesty.

The author, David Gledhill, made a film dealing with this most painful of topics as he was in the throes of the grieving process himself. A burst of creativity lending rare solace to the darkest of times, as can often happen.

That got me thinking about Beyond Goodbye, an almost unbearably beautiful ongoing tribute from a family to their son, that I’ve been privileged to play a small part in.

In January 2011 I was casually checking Facebook while on a train to work and started seeing posts about Josh Edmonds, a former colleague and promising young filmmaker. He was travelling in Vietnam and I’d been aware of his progress in the semi-conscious way a drip feed of status updates engenders. I vaguely knew about his excitement at recent New Year’s Eve celebrations. And now he’d been killed in a motorbike accident.

Watching the grief unfold on Facebook was a new experience then, the etiquette of real time mourning on a public platform still yet to develop fixed rules or codes. What took place was raw and overwhelming, but also fascinating.

I hastily wrote a blog post about this very modern way of coping, initially feeling that despite a few potential pitfalls, we are ultimately all richer for being able to deal with death in this way. And then came the funeral, which dispelled any possible doubt.

Josh’s family embraced the outpouring of tributes posted via Facebook, to the extent of covering the walls with the words. The technology enabled them to discover the full reach of their son’s friendship network, helping to forge supportive, unexpected bonds from the tragedy, relationships that have grown ever since.

And that was just the start. A deeply creative family, Josh’s funeral was inspiring at every turn. Unimaginable grief somehow purposefully channelled into a wide range of incredible rituals and projects with which to mark his memory.

Shortly afterwards, this film, Beyond Goodbye, was completed as a resource for anyone recently bereaved. Josh’s parents say it is “the story of our attempts to organise the funeral ritual ourselves without recourse to conventional undertakers, and what immense value that was as we struggled to come to terms with our loss.”

Like the social networks, the video has become another tool with which to bring funerals and death back into a more central place in society’s discourse. If we shy away from talking about these matters we ultimately miss out one of the most natural, vital experiences of still being alive.

Josh’s father Jimmy then produced the truly breathtaking book of images and words, Released, working with his son’s ashes to create a very personal photographic eulogy. His attempts to make sense of the conflicting emotions and confusions at losing a loved one are starkly visual and once again, pointedly public.

Josh’s family continue their cathartic process, from setting up a successful memorial work placement scheme to tree planting, sending postcards to Josh and keeping his Facebook profile active with lovely messages and photos. They have unwittingly become torchbearers for the progressive funerals and bereavement movements too, most recently visiting the House of Lords to launch their latest film, Say Their Name, which promotes the work of charity The Compassionate Friends.

It may feel odd in our “death averse” culture to mourn in such an open way, but it matters that there are increasing numbers of people doing it. Newspaper headlines may still scream about privacy, grooming and cyber bullying, but digital technology is having a profound effect on the levels of support we can all find when we lose a loved one.

There are few positives to come out of the experience of loss, but the ones that do, shine brightly. The unforeseen path the Edmonds family have found themselves on in their grief has created a growing wealth of resources at beyondgoodbye.co.uk. The subject matter is personal, but also universal. It is well worth sharing.