Phil Gottlieb often gets Facebook invitations to parties and barbecues.
A woman recently came across a photo of Jeffrey Nickelson on his Facebook page — and hit on him.
The thing is, both men have been dead for about two years.
Their families have kept their Facebook pages active because they provide comfort to loved ones and friends who drop by for virtual visits. But the whole thing can get a little weird.
Facebook claims 500 million active users, scores of whom die every day. And the social networking phenomenon has fundamentally changed the way we mourn as individuals, families and communities. Facebook postings have largely replaced marathon phone-call notifications and gravesite visits, not to mention taken a chunk out of sales of sympathy cards — by some industry estimates, as much as 30 percent. A deceased person’s Facebook page becomes a virtual condolence book, a public, communal mourning place that gives everyone processing a shared loss a place to gather and grieve together.
But Facebook’s infiltration into every aspect of our lives has been so quick and widespread, there are no rules yet for how to properly use it at life’s most difficult moments.
When a person dies, is it appropriate for a family to announce the news on Facebook? Should one react by leaving a private or public message? Do we have an obligation to eventually “unfriend” a dead person, or might that be taken as an offense to survivors? Does the family of a deceased person have an obligation to take the person’s page down — or is it OK to leave it there forever? Is it weird to “friend” a person you know to be dead but whose page lives on?
“These are really good and strange questions we haven’t even pondered yet,” said nationally syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson, whose own mother recently died. “I’ve concluded, based on my own experience, that people should do whatever they want. I don’t like the idea of developing some sort of protocol — because then people feel like they have to follow it.”
Strange afterlife
But when you keep a person alive on Facebook, odd things start to happen. You’re automatically reminded of upcoming birthdays. Your late friend might randomly pop up on your page with a status update from the past, such as, “Make it a great day!”
Facebook’s automated “Tag a Friend” feature might ask you to identify a dead person in one of your old photos. Complain about it, and Facebook will send you this message: “We’re very sorry for any discomfort this feature has caused. Unfortunately, we do not have the technical ability to determine whether the person shown in the photo is deceased.”
When Nickelson, the founder of Shadow Theatre Company, died unexpectedly in September 2009, his page was flooded with expressions of shock and deep sadness. So was Gottlieb’s, when the Realtor and local actor died in June 2009. When Dickinson lost her mother, friends and strangers alike reached out to the “Ask Amy” columnist on Facebook.
But there is no less reliable predictor of human behavior than our individual response to death, or the outpouring that often follows.
To Gottlieb’s wife, Facebook was a godsend. To Dickinson, a pleasant surprise. To Nickelson’s daughter, a nightmare.
“It was such a shock,” Mary Dailey Gottlieb said of her husband’s death. “I was so grateful that I didn’t have to get on the phone and tell the story over and over and over. Facebook was a way for people to get in touch with me on a caring, personal level — without actually having to talk to me.”
She took comfort in her two sons and the insular local theater community’s response to it. “I felt like at the time we were so supported by the whole realm of people Phil knew,” she said. “And it really was a way for all those people who were hurting to come together themselves.”
Mary marked the anniversary of Phil’s death by going back and reading all the Facebook posts from the time of his death. “It was very heartwarming to be reminded what people were saying at the time,” she said. “When you have an immediate loss, you’re not absorbing the messages — you’re just feeling the general love.”
Dickinson, the advice expert, found herself in unfamiliar territory when her mother died. “I hadn’t thought ahead to some of these issues that would crop up,” she said. “I see people post a death notice on their Facebook wall, but I absolutely did not want to broadcast my mother’s death in that way. I have lots and lots of Facebook friends I don’t really know, and I did not want to hear from them.
“But of course, people did contact me to extend their condolences that way — and it turns out I was very happy to hear from people. I wouldn’t have expected that.”
“Judging my grief”
But Nickelson’s daughter, who had a child soon before her father’s death, had a much different experience. ShaShauna Staton was so upset by the well-intentioned Facebook response to his death that she sought counseling.
“The hardest thing for me to see was all these people posting, ‘He was like a father to me,’ ” Staton said. “If I saw one more person claim my father, I was going to scream, because he wasn’t your father. He was my father. Your dad’s down the street, and he’s fine.”
Staton was in a bad place, and she knew it. “Everyone thought I should get over it more quickly,” she said. “I felt like people were judging my grief. I couldn’t go on Facebook for a month.”
And as the person in despair, Dickinson said, it was Staton’s right to feel however she felt.
“This gets to a very basic point in terms of condolences: It’s actually very easy to get the message wrong,” Dickinson said. “It’s important to be mindful of the effect your contact can have on survivors, and to put the family member first. As a grieving person myself, I don’t want someone to tell me that what I’m doing, or feeling is inappropriate — especially since it’s personal.”
Staton often drops by her father’s page to leave holiday greetings, inside jokes or family updates. “It gives me a place where I can just talk to him,” she said.
It doesn’t bother her that her messages can be seen by others. “It’s never anything completely personal,” she said. “But it’s just something I like to do.”
Facebook allows family members to permanently remove a loved one’s page. Or to convert it to “memorial” status. Then, friends can continue to leave posts on the page, but the account is otherwise frozen from further activity.
Dickinson said keeping a loved one’s Facebook page is not unlike saving voice mails or text messages from the dead. “Anything that gives us comfort is a good thing,” she said. “I have kept my mother’s number on my cellphone. I’m not morbid or clinging to anything … I keep it there because I kind of like it.”
Now that two years have passed since her husband’s death, Mary Gottlieb recently asked son Chris if it’s not time to take Phil’s Facebook page down. “I said, ‘Are you sure that’s not like, weird?’ ” she said. ‘It’s like all of the sudden, Dad just shows up someplace.’
“But Chris said, ‘You know, Mom, people still write on Dad’s page. It just seems to make them feel better once in a while.’ And that’s good enough for me.”
So by all, means, keep right on inviting Phil Gottlieb to your weekend barbecue.
“Phil just loved to be invited to parties and thinking he was on the A-List,” Mary said with laugh. “He always was the life of the party.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
File video: ShaShauna Staton accepts award on father’s behalf
ShaShauna Lynette Staton accepts a 2009 Denver Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts on behalf of her late father, Jeffrey Nickelson, founder of Shadow Theatre Company. Video by John Moore, The Denver Post.
There’s been a death: Facebook dos and don’ts
John Moore
