Well That's Helpful...

I've bitched about it before and I will probably bitch about it again but the editing that Facebook does for the On This Day feature makes me crazy. I get that they think they are being helpful, that their algorithms tell them that people don't like to think about death, but...

For a few years they would hide the month before, the month of and the month after, my dad died. I'd be cruising along looking at memories from 8 years ago, 7 years ago, 5 years ago...wait what? They did it for probably 5 years before they finally decided that I was ready to deal with the fact that my dad died.  

Now they hide the weeks around Ann's death and the whole month of August from 2019.

And it does exactly the opposite of what I think their robot programming thinks it would do. Instead of protecting you from feeling sad seeing those memories it creates a black hole where you know they should be. They are gone. Just gone.

It reinforces the loss.

And because they are soulless computers they don't understand how everything is tied. So today I got a memory from 12 years ago that Mom was able to stop her chemotherapy two cycles early, but I did not get the post from 3 years ago today which was her last day on this earth. 

Gee. Thanks. 

I mean, the stopping chemo was a great memory. The chemo was killing her faster than the cancer ever would. As evidenced by the fact that she lived almost another decade after stopping. But her last day on this earth was also a good memory. Sad, sure. But good. She was going out on her terms. She was so ready to go. We were all waiting, and honestly hoping it would be today or in two days but not tomorrow. But even though that wasn't what happened, it was still her time. 

They wiped the weeks around Ann's death as well. Which to be honest could be because of Ann or Rex or Matt. It was not a great month. But what they didn't do was notice that all of the posts on Matt's page are memorial posts. Because nobody in his family turned his page into a memorial page Facebook treats it like it's active. So I got a birthday reminder to make sure I sent him a message. Now, to be perfectly fair, it's not like I will ever forget his birthday, and they were also kind enough to show me the "On This Day" from 2020 where I posted about how hard it was to have my birthday and not share it with him for the first time in my entire life. But it's still incredibly frustrating that they won't let me see the days around his death but love shoving a birthday reminder at me.

August is a hard month. The waiting for her to die for weeks was extremely difficult. It has made August much more difficult than May when Ann died, than June when my dad died, than September when Jack died. The lingering. The waiting. The fact that we dealt with her death for weeks before it happened and then we didn't have the funeral until October so it stayed an open wound for months after. It was awful. 

But hiding the memories doesn't make August any easier. It doesn't make the month any better. It doesn't erase what happened. Time will help. Time has already helped. August still sucks but it sucks less this year than it did last year. I imagine in a few years it will be down to just a tiny bit of suckage. But that won't be because I forgot what that month was like. That I forgot how hard the next few months were. It just means I will have found a place to carry that grief. 

I just wish that whoever programmed the On This Day feature for Facebook understood that. 

I am sad because I'm still learning how to carry that grief. And the grief that came on its heels with the pandemic; the grief that came during the pandemic with losing family and friends; the grief that came with sitting with friends who lost their family and friends as well. Ignoring that pain doesn't make it easier. 

Ignoring pain never makes it easier. 

Because pain will not be ignored. Try it and it will come roaring back at you like a birthday wish reminder for a dead friend...

Tomorrow is the worst of the worst of August days.

I'll be facing it full on because hiding it, pretending it didn't happen, none of that is helpful. 

Three years. It's easier every year. 

But it's always going to suck.