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On Death

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The first social media suicide. ‘I’ve seen people die,” Océane said, during one of the online broadcasts she made just before her end.

The first social media suicide

“Frankly that’s not what shocks you. A woman came in to the retirement home where I work and she lasted just two weeks. She arrived and she was fine. I have no idea what shit they gave her: the nurses shot her full of medication. By the end you couldn’t understand what she said, she was mostly dribbling. The princess myth: Hilary Mantel on Diana. Royal time should move slowly and by its own laws: creeping, like the flow of chrism from a jar.

The princess myth: Hilary Mantel on Diana

But 20 ordinary years have jog-trotted by, and it’s possible to have a grownup conversation with someone who wasn’t born when Diana died. Her widower is long remarried. Her eldest son, once so like her, shows signs of developing the ponderous looks of Philip, his grand-father. Diana should be as passe as ostrich plumes: one of those royal or quasi-royal women, like Mary of Teck or Wallis Simpson or the last tsarina, whose images fade to sepia and whose bones are white as pearls. Instead, we gossip about her as if she had just left the room. For some people, being dead is only a relative condition; they wreak more than the living do. Response To Person Grieving For Friend Might Be Best Internet Comment Of All Time. She's Still Dying on Facebook. It’s been five years since my best friend from high school died, but her death happens over and over online.

She's Still Dying on Facebook

I’ve been obsessed with Lea’s Facebook profile since January 2006, when she joined, just a month after I created my own account. In high school, we had a consuming friendship—together we did things we’d never do alone, like skinny-dip in Lake Michigan while rolling on Ecstasy. In summer, our sleepovers lasted weeks. At 1 a.m., we’d sneak out and trudge through the woods to a field, where we smoked cigarettes and got blackout drunk on wine stolen from our mothers. We talked a lot about getting wasted and breaking out of dead-end northern Michigan; anthems of small-town girls. The science of human decay: Inside the world's largest body farm. Warning: this story contains graphic images Seven miles northwest of San Marcos, Texas, 50 or so naked human bodies in varying stages of decomposition are strewn about in a 16-acre field.

The science of human decay: Inside the world's largest body farm

Some are fully mummified, their flesh dried out by the harsh Texas sun. Others have been picked over so voraciously by vultures that their bones are frayed. The most lurid are the fresh ones: week-old bodies that have ballooned to twice their normal size and crawl with thousands of maggots. This operation, at a place called Freeman Ranch, is part of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University. The bodies are donated and left out in the elements as part of research aimed at better understanding the process of decomposition, mainly to assist in criminal investigations. "What we really want to figure out is, at a basic level, how decomposition works," says Daniel Wescott, an anthropology professor at Texas State and the director of the body farm. So he started collecting bodies. Click to view. Photos Bodies uncorrupted. So I wrote this song thinking about the guy I... - Annelise's Notebooks.

I lost someone this week, and the greatest words... - Annelise's Notebooks. The Secret Life of Grief - Derek Thompson. Someone laughed. It might have been my sister, dad, grandmother, or one of the dozen friends and family members arrayed around that bed in my parents' room. Before we cried, said goodbye, and fanned out in separate cars to begin our private journeys of grief, something was said, at the moment she died, in a summer evening's half-light. And somebody laughed.

Maybe it seems strange, but I like to remember it. I come from a long line of mama's boys. Jewish mothers, however, will sooner cut off a pinky than apologize for cultivating religious devotion in their children. One day, when I was 8, my younger sister Kira got the hunch that mom was making stuff up. "Mom is not 27," she said, displaying the evidence, radiating with a cruel glee. The words shattered my dumb little ears. The rest of the story is a memory of other people's memories, but according to the folklore, I ran downstairs and hid in the basement.

Psychologists call this drawn out period "anticipatory grief. " "Hmm. "Eleven. " My Father Died — Human Parts. Grief is not linear, and it is everywhere at adrienne maree, the luscious satyagraha. Grieving With Fandom — Human Parts. "My Dad Died" Tales Of Mere Existence. "Waiting For Life To Begin" Tales Of Mere Existence. Louis CK animation short. Dead and online: What happens to your digital estate when you die?

HARI SREENIVASAN: Do you have an email account?

Dead and online: What happens to your digital estate when you die?

How about a Facebook page? Bank online? You Can Delete, but You Can't Forget - Jacqui Shine. I erased all of my mother's emails after she died.

You Can Delete, but You Can't Forget - Jacqui Shine

I want them back.