Social media - What people leave behind, when they go.

It is the anniversary of a friends death, 2 years ago today.

We worked together at the same place I was made redundant from after the birth of my second child.

The last time I saw her was a couple of days before she left on her overseas experience, we sat at a table at Garrisons in Sylvia park in Auckland, New Zealand, I had just given birth to Scarlett where I drank my first wine after a long 9 months of pregnancy.

She was courageous and kind, stubborn and funny and her funeral was filled with so much love and sadness and people that meant the world to her.

It has been 2 years since she has passed, and she is still present wherever I go on social media.

It is crazy what people leave behind when they go now. It is no longer just ashes, a few books of photos and memories. It is pages and pages of their words, their smiling drunken pictures on a Saturday night out, pictures of animals on an Instagram page, rants posted in the dark and the heartfelt stories on a Facebook page.

Belinda is still there following me on Stumbleupon, she liked a lot of the pages that I still like on Facebook so her face pops up as a fellow liker on a daily basis.

I checked her Pinterest board a year ago and it had among other things boards that were titled "get in my belly" and Celebrities", but the ones that really got me were the boards titled "Bucket list" and "Wedding" that were filled with pins of beautiful brides in wheelchairs and wedding themed beer holders...

My Facebook timeline explodes on her birthday and on her anniversary with posts remembering her and her messages still sit in my Facebook messenger... her last words to me "I'm not going anywhere, any time soon xxx"

...But she did

...about 3 days after she wrote that message to me... the day after she married the love of her life, her wedding pictures showing her hair short from the chemo, looking beautiful as a brunette, her hair no longer a shade of bleach blonde, unable to stand, but still showing her strength. Without social media I would never seen those pictures.

I am so grateful that she managed to have that wedding day, even though she was only a wife for a day.

It is lovely to be able to go back and see all these things on social media, but it made me wonder when they will disappear? Is there a time limit on how long a page can be memorialized? How long before the amount of likes to a page is merely ghosts of people long gone?

It made me wonder how will people remember me? Am I going to annoy everyone with my Facebook posts popping up in everyone's daily memories. the pages and pages of pointess chatter or will people scroll back and appreciate and laugh at the memes that I shared.

I hope that people will look back at my messages with fondness. Look at my pictures and smile. I hope my children will learn about me, who I was right now, sitting here, typing this.

Belinda didn't get to live long enough to see me start up this blog, but I hope she would be OK with me talking about her... I think she would be... she always did like being the centre of attention! lol