Dad's Facebook Page

   It was my Dad's birthday yesterday. Facebook went out of its way to give me several days notification that his birthday was impending (along with a handful of other people's) and also did a fine job of alerting me that his birthday had, in fact, arrived.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

   Of course, I don't need reminding when my Dad's birthday is---it is etched into my consciousness almost as boldly as my own birthday. I do enjoy seeing my Dad's face pop up on occasions like this, however, so I suppose I should thank Facebook.
   What is secondary to all this, though, is that my Dad's been deceased for two years!
   In light of this, receiving Facebook reminders about his birthday are somewhat bittersweet, naturally. I have no idea how many other FB friends of his still continue to receive the same messages as I do, I suspect that some do and it wouldn't surprise me if others have already "unfriended" him.
   Personally, I don't have a problem with receiving these little reminders and notifications periodically---they feel more like happy little memories than anything else. At the same time, I can't help but think that the appropriate thing to do would be to shut down his Facebook page.
   This would be hard to do, though! Whenever I find myself on his page, I am assailed by nothing but pleasant memories and pics of people I love. Kind of hard to delete! I find I also have a hard time throwing away greeting cards and deleting romantic e-mails, etc. Just doesn't seem right.
   So I am in a bit of a quandary as to what to do with my Dad's Facebook page. I don't exactly know how to delete an entire Facebook page but I do have Dad's password for it so I'm sure I could find out.
   Because I have his password (and because I also have a particular sense of humour), I have many times been tempted to send "messages from beyond" via his Facebook status. Yesterday I really wanted to make his status say "Thank you for the birthday thoughts, everyone, am having a wonderful time, just wish it wasn't so damn hot down here!" You know, stuff like that...
   When my Dad passed away, there was a tendency to want to save everything of his---old clothes, stationery, pots and pans, those kinds of things. With a little time passing, however, common sense has set in. It's now much easier to see what was actually important and worth holding on to.
   I suppose most of us go through something similar when a loved one passes away. You want to hold on to as much as you can for as long as you can. Well, this is where I find myself with my Dad's Facebook page.
   People have been dying for millions of years now but most of them didn't have Facebook pages. A lot of the elderly these days still do not, so it's not like there's an accepted protocol for how to handle situations like this. There's also not much on my Dad's page that isn't stored elsewhere so it's not like I (we) would be losing valuable pics or anything. He  never truly engaged people on FB, beyond the more-or-less perfunctory salutations, so we would not be losing significant conversations he might have had with anyone, either.
   What to do then?
   I suspect that at some time in the near future, barring any possible objections from the people who were his friends and family, my Dad's FB page will cease to exist. When that time comes, I'm sure it will all boil down to the single "click" of a button. And that will be hard to do...