Dear Facebook: Don’t remind me

Yesterday morning, July 12, I got up at 4:30 — my usual time; went downstairs, filled the bathroom sink with hot water, wet and brushed my hair, washed my face, then shaved. A new wrinkle just above my upper lip has me creating new ways of getting a clean shave. One small challenge of getting older while keeping a hairless face, I guess.

After drying my face I walked to the kitchen table, grabbed the cup of coffee I set out the night before. Then I moved into my office (aka the guest room), lifted the shade and looked out at the sun rising over Bear Pond. Every day it is a different, beautiful sight.

Laptop in hand, I sat on the couch, coffee cup nearby, and started my workday by checking my email and key websites — including work and my personal Facebook pages.

And there on my personal page, as part of its “On This Day” promotion, Facebook recycled an old post I made on one of my mother, Claire Fish’s, birthdays. Facebook’s “On This Day” is for my eyes only, except Facebook is reasonably certain I will want to publicly “share” this old birthday post with my Facebook friends, maybe to the public at large.

One problem, Facebook. Until you reminded me, I had not remembered this July 12 is my mother’s birthday. She died February 11, 2017.

How to respond to Facebook’s reminder? At that moment I did nothing with it, moving instead to my work.

Much later in the day, most of my work behind me, I returned to my laptop. There again on my Facebook page was a different reminder. This time, the social media company put together a video celebrating my mother’s birthday, complete with a clownish music soundtrack more suitable for an ice cream truck vendor parked at a county fair.

Again, how to respond? Last year my mother had been dead five months when her birthday arrived. I suppose all of the emotional highs and lows leading up to and including her death overshadowed last year’s birth date. I really don’t recall.

Facebook’s reminder pushed me into wondering how I would (or should) react on social media. Such a new, strange question. From this moment forward, social media — Facebook and/or other social media — will push out annual happy birthday notices about my mother. Some will no doubt go public, and well-meaning family and friends will respond in kind.

It’s uncomfortable and it is sad. My future expressions about my mother should be, and will be, made at my discretion.

Facebook, I suppose, might be too big to consider any downside to their “On This Day” promotions. Probably the majority of Facebook users enjoy “On This Day.” Others like me are caught off-guard by unwanted, really, reminders.

Yes, I checked my FB Notifications settings and I already had turned off Birthday notices and “On This Day” notices. I don’t remember doing so, and neither do I understand why, then, I’m still getting such notices.

Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to my “On This Day” notices, and I often use the Birthday reminders to send a friend a happy birthday note.

But, Facebook’s posthumous reminder of my mother’s birthday was not pleasant. In the end, I decided to add a personal note to Facebook’s clownish music birthday video and posted it for the public to see.

Here’s what I wrote:

Claire Fish moved into the spirit realm a little over a year ago where, I believe, my mom is ageless and everywhere. So wishing her a happy birthday is conflicting and, therefore, sad. On this day my mom is not another year older. She is timeless. Whenever I think of her — which is often — she is with me, and I am with her.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.