Family, Facebook and Death

I have a large extended family. There are Cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Second Cousins ten times removed and everything in between, most of them I know and can tell you stories about them. You know like that's Sarah, she once played on the beach with me in a green swimsuit. Or that's my cousins husbands mothers niece who I met at the wedding and she used to run marathons.

Thanks to modern technology I was able to keep up with most of them. I could read Facebook updates, see pictures of their family, celebrate new jobs, births of babies, marriages and in some cases divorces!

Today though this modern tech that I take for granted gave me bad news. I found out through Facebook that there had been a death. A death of a beautiful young woman, just on the cusp of adulthood. A death I wouldn't have found out about for many months, if at all, if my cousin, this beautiful young woman's father, hadn't posted an update on Facebook.

So what's my point? I'm honestly not sure.

I'm thankful that my cousin has a place to tell all his friends and family what is happening in his life, that we are able to support him through this horrid time. I'm thankful that I was able to speak with him and tell him how sorry I was and then was able to reach out to my friends and family and was able to get people to pray for him and his family.

I'm not thankful for the same thing though. I'm not expecting my cousin to be thinking of phoning extended family to tell them the news when he must be reeling from the news himself but it's not how you expect to find out about a death though is it? Reading a status update amongst updates from people talking about how they have run out of toilet roll or how they have new hair cuts or how they have decided that they will have a bar of chocolate this afternoon.

I don't know the solution to this (I have some ideas) but I knew I wanted to share. Do you think there is an answer to this or even what the question is?

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