In defense of online grief

“I remember thinking I needed to talk to John about this,” Joan Didion writes in her 2005 memoir, The year of magical thinkingpublished following the death of her husband of almost 40 years, John Gregory Dunne. “I couldn’t count how many times during a normal day something came up that I needed to tell him,” he continues. “That impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of a response.” This excerpt routinely circulates on Instagram along with another popular quote attributed to writer Jamie Anderson: “Pain is just love with nowhere to go.”

What neither Didion nor Anderson could have predicted is that, in the years to come, this unexpressed love would, in fact, find release. In the same network in which we now live permanently, we also cling fervently to the dead. Until a few months ago, Reena Arora frequently appeared on her singer-songwriter daughter Raveena Aurora’s Instagram feed, celebrating in front of a billboard displaying her new single, sewing outfits to wear on stage or lying in a hospital bed, holding her son’s hand. Now, without her mother present, Raveena fidgets around an online grief retreat she has organized. While most people have been kind, he writes to me later, it’s still difficult to examine every facial expression and micromovement as you try to recover from a life-changing loss.

After leading a brief meditation, the 32-year-old speaks to the hundred attendees to ask them how they feel. “The truth is that fear invaded me,” one confesses. “It came up for me too,” he responds instantly. When we regret something (a person, a relationship, or even a dream), Raveena observes, an expectation has been shattered. Perhaps we imagined ourselves taking care of our parents in their old age or traveling the world with our partner. With this hope destroyed, we must rebuild our identities from scratch. Worse, we must do this in a society that forces us to look forward rather than back, to pragmatically leave the past behind.

It’s not uncommon to read comments accusing those who are grieving online of acting out for likes or asking them to just move on. In fact, many South Asian rituals urge mourners to “let the spirit rest.” In some houses, mirrors are covered so that the soul of the deceased is not caught in the reflection. In others, doors and windows open briefly at the time of death to help the soul ascend in peace. After the cremation, the funeral is instructed not to look back when they leave, as doing so might invite the spirit to follow them home. Despite all these superstitions and traditions centered on releasing the dead, we are now doing everything in our power to keep them alive.