I’m trying to distill “the lesson” from this story, What Does Managing A Loved One’s Digital Legacy Look Like?”
Because of her mother’s wishes for privacy, Courtney was surprised when her phone began buzzing non-stop soon after her mother died:
It was weird, because I’d only told a few people that she was dying. I learned that a family friend had been posting detailed updates about my mother’s last moments, and never checked with us about whether we wanted privacy and time. I was very hurt by that. I just felt like the world needed to stop.
Upset that her brothers might learn of their mom’s death on Facebook and not from their sister, she called them immediately. For several days, Courtney tried logging in to her social media accounts, but seeing her mother referred to in the past tense overwhelmed her. She wanted to scream to her well-meaning friends, “I am not ready for my mother to be a “was” yet!” Courtney turned off her phone and asked her best friend to become her family’s informal digital proxy by posting updates from the family on Courtney’s Facebook page, including logistical information about the funeral service and burial. In turn, her friend shared with Courtney the many appreciative comments about her mother’s life from social media sites and from the on-line guest book for her mother’s obituary.
A friend recently went through cancer with her husband, who succumbed. I assumed her virtual disappearance from Facebook during the illness was just that there was “too much going on” for trifles and indulgences like FB. This article gives me an appreciation that “too much going on” can be in one’s emotions as much as in the pages of one’s Daytimer.
I don’t know how you can anticipate and prevent all the things that can go wrong with social media. I’d tell you if I knew.
Introducing the retirement commune from the Boston Globe thinks outside the box on some of the issues that arise from today’s demographics.
[T]he pool of family caregivers is shrinking. Some 1 in 4 boomers never had children; those who did may have sons and daughters thousands of miles away. One-third of the population will face old age single — either widowed, divorced, or never married …
And since the boomer generation is so large — by 2030, the 65-plus population is expected to double to 72 million, or 1 out of 5 Americans — their economic strength, as a demographic bloc, could lead to communities built around all sorts of shared interests. Andrew Carle, founding director of the Program in Senior Housing Administration at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, envisions niche communities for dog lovers, gardeners, even cruise ship enthusiasts. “Boomers have always had the critical mass to demand more choices in anything, whether flavors of ice cream or brands in blue jeans,” he says. “You only need 300 Grateful Dead fans to fill a retirement community.”
It occurs to me, though, that the effort to make retirement lemonade from the lemons of childlessness is problematic:
- Most of the alternatives mentioned in the article rely on age discrimination – if favor of us geezers, to be sure – to create their cozy communes(ities)
- The alternatives contemplate abandoning older housing stock, which include lots of features that make CAPS tear their hair out. This is not an unequivocally good thing.
- At least one of the projects – The (six-story, ten “home,” 93,000 square foot, $400+ per square foot, $38 million) Leonard Florence Center for Living involved massive government subsidies – more than 70% of the cost.
- Building a community of, say, Dead Heads strikes me as stultifyingly similar to the narrowcast internet echo chambers we now retreat to, where seldom is heard a dissident word. Will that sort of thing promote authentic human thriving, or will it rather be the social equivalent of Soma?
Quoth on of the residents: “I couldn’t be in a better place. I feel like a person as opposed to being a patient — it’s like a family here.”
“Like family.” Courtesy of age discrimination, moving to a new place, and government subsidy. I think I’d prefer the original, not the simulacrum.
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Both stories today H/T Bennett Boehning & Clary LLP’s estimable Elder Law monthly newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 