If you, like me, have posted photos of your dogs on social media for a long time, there’s every chance that you, like me, get regularly smacked in the face by a Facebook “memory” – a picture of your beloved heart dog who passed some time ago. And the longer you have been online, the more dogs you have loved and lost will appear there – sometimes in a group shot!
It’s bittersweet, isn’t it? When you unexpectedly see a photo of a small happy or funny moment that you may have forgotten about without the photo’s resurfacing, it’s just as likely to make you smile as bring tears to your eyes. Well, the smiles get more common the more time that goes by. When I see photos of Rupert, my sweet, sensitive Border Collie who died in late 2003 at the age of 14 years, I smile every time. But I’m still prone to getting weepy if I see a post about Otto, whom I lost last June.
I’m aware that we can delete these old posts so they never are presented to us again as a “Facebook memory” – and I have deleted a few. I still have the photos, and I can look them up in my filing cabinets and on my backup drives. But there are some memories that are too hard to revisit – at least when it happens without warning, or when I don’t have time for processing the feelings that arise when I see the serious, loving gaze of Otto as an old dog; he had such gravitas!
It’s far easier to revisit the memories and photos of him as a young dog, still trying to figure out life with humans and new to his role as the leader to and guide for foster puppies and dogs. This makes perfect sense; those memories are farther away from the present and the more painful recent past. Is there a way to change the Facebook settings so they only show us memories that are more than, say, five years old?
Even if there isn’t a way to do that, and even if Facebook serves up are painful reminders of my loss from time to time, I’m glad to have this weird little digital time capsule of my life with my dogs, both the ones who have shared my life for years and years and the dozens of foster dogs who shared my home for just a few weeks or months. I never want to forget any of them.
