Family News on Facebook

A few weeks ago I was on a Facebook page devoted to informing alumni of my high school when our classmates pass. The school is about 85 years old, so there are a lot of classes reported on that page. I went there to see the obituary of one of the people that I went to school with when a few posts down I saw a post that said,

"I don't know if anyone else reported this, but my sister-in-law, Holly Howard Stevenson, passed away suddenly on June 28."

Holly was my niece.

I did a double-take. I wasn't sure of the married name. It didn't seem right. I just wasn't sure. So I called a friend who works in the same building as Holly's husband and he confirmed that, yes, my niece had died suddenly. He said that Holly's husband had talked with her at lunch-time, but when he got home in the evening, he found her dead on the couch. Congenital Long QT Syndrome had claimed another member of my family. Holly and her sisters had not stayed in touch with each other or anyone else in the family since my sister died in 2015, so we found out on a Facebook page that Holly died. 

This morning when I opened my computer I got a notification that there was a post of Facebook from my nephew that I had not seen. He is my sister's step-child, and we weren't particularly close. He was a teenager when my sister married his father and I was never around him much. We knew each other mostly through Facebook. He is in the same infantry unit as my son, had been for years. They knew each other's names, but never put the family connection together until a year ago.

The Facebook post was actually from Bobby's partner. Bobby had been sick for a few weeks and had been moved to hospice. He is no longer conscious. 

My son has been on active duty since the middle of July. He wasn't even able to attend his brother's wedding. I'm sure that he does not know this was happening. 

I called my sister and told her how sorry I was to hear the news. She told me that it had been an awful few weeks. She said that it had been cancer, probably caused by the chemicals in the burning pits in Iraq. She said to make sure that my son keeps current on his cancer screenings. I wanted to scold her for not telling us. But she had already told me the reasons why. She had been in the middle of selling two houses and preparing to move to Nevada when all of this happened with Bobby. She had a lot going on and calling  the family who weren't particularly close to Bobby wasn't at the top of the list.

But you know what, Yeah, don't make us find it out on Facebook.

Before Facebook we had a phone tree. One member from each of the branches of the family would get the call directly. They were responsible for passing the news on to the rest of the family. We talked to each other. We consoled each other. Now we post it on Facebook.