Grief in the Days of Time Machines
I can dig deeper—farther back—until she is alive again. I can plunge into posts from four years ago, when she was happy, healthy. And there, alongside almost every photo or post I ever made, are her comments—the evidence that she loved me and cared about everything I said or did, however significant or frivolous. Most of her comments I replied to when she made them. But some I did not. Looking at them again, I nearly click “like” half a dozen times as her voice, her sarcastic wit, return to me. If I comment, will she hear me? Answer back? That would be a Facebook feature I could really get behind.
I have dreaded that Facebook would delete her page. Now it stands as a memorial, and I and many of her friends visit it from time to time, leaving comments or posting photos as one would leave flowers at a grave. Scrolling through my friend list, it is eerie and yet strangely comforting to see the names and faces of those who have died in the seven years since I have used this site. As I get older, as my friends get older, will there come a time when there are more friends gone than friends alive? I read somewhere that at some point in the future, Facebook will become a graveyard, a vast landscape of abandoned profiles, a place to visit on birthdays and anniversaries, to indulge in the notion that one can still speak to the loved one who has died.
I think perhaps this is a healthy thing. A source of comfort and of healing. But there are lines that can be crossed, and when one crosses them, perhaps the place one travels to is not a place that should be visited.
Terri died on January 3, 2015. I have traveled back through her timeline, looking for posts she made on January 3 of 2014, 2013, 2012, and earlier still. I have searched for emails she sent me on that date. Was there any sign, any indication, any change to the slant of the sun on those earlier January 3rds that let her know that this date was different? The voice that arises from these posts and messages is not a solace to me. Instead, it haunts me. I find it frightening. It is not my sister’s voice I am hearing. I think it is very likely my own.
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When we were little, Terri and I had a Saturday afternoon ritual. We would search through our TV Guide for horror movies that had earned only one star in a system that allowed for four. Occasionally, we even found movies that rated no stars at all.
“Do you think that’s a mistake—that there aren’t any stars?” she asked me.
“No,” I told her, always the older and wiser one. “It means that this one is so bad they couldn’t give it even a single star.”
There was a delicious anticipation in sitting down to a movie that was intended to frighten us but that we were pretty sure would fail. We cuddled on the sofa and laughed at the painfully terrible cinematic offerings of such classics as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Attack of the Giant Leeches, and Mothra.
Our favorite was The Killer Shrews. During a hurricane, the terrified inhabitants of an island cower indoors as gnashing, whisker-waving, wild-eyed rodents gnaw their way through the walls.
“What are those things?” she asked me.