Last night, I came home from a very, very long day at work. I quickly grabbed dinner, plopped down on the sofa to watch a few moments of a client’s show, and then planned to pass out from exhaustion. During a commercial break, I grabbed my iPad and looked at some Facebook updates. All of a sudden, I saw this on my mother’s page:

I looked at it for a few moments and tried to process what I was looking at. I turned to GWE and said, “I think grandma died….4 hours ago…and no one told me.” She responded with, “What?!?!” as I showed her what I was looking at.

I grabbed my phone and texted my mother with “You awake?” (I didn’t call. It was midnight where she was and I thought she might be in mourning!) This was the following text conversation:

Mom: “Yep. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep.”

Me: “Is grandma ok?”

Mom: “Yep. Why?”

Me: “Saw a weird message on your Facebook page.”

Mom: “About her?”

Me:  “Yes. Asking about your ‘late’ mother.”

Mom: “Geez. Looking.”

Me: “It was posted 4 hours ago. Is this like the time my rabbit died you and didn’t tell me for a month?”

Mom: “Oh, brother. Headed to the kitchen to get on my computer.” Pause “OH CRAP! I just answered her.”

Me: “Delete it from your page before people start asking questions!” Pause “Glad I saw that before flowers started showing up at the house!”

Mom: “OMG! I feel like punching daddy until he wakes up to tell him.”

Needless to say, my mother called my grandmother the next morning to tell her what had happened. It turns out that the woman who posted on my mother’s Facebook page had left a phone message for my grandmother last Thanksgiving. Since my grandmother never got around to returning the call, the other person assumed the worst – that she had passed away. (I’ve had people not return my phone calls before. And, maybe I wished that they were dead at the time….but, I never assumed they were dead and then sent their relatives a condolence message on a social media site!!)

My grandmother called me yesterday afternoon laughing hysterically. I told her that for a dead woman who was calling from “the great beyond,” her cell reception was fantastic! She told me that it was cold where she was, but the harp music was nice and the angels seemed friendly. I told her that I’m glad we caught it in time, otherwise my parents would have come home one evening and found a Minyon (10 Jewish people needed for certain prayers) standing in their driveway. We laughed and laughed. (Yes – this is sick.)

It actually did make me wonder – what happens to our “virtual lives” when we pass away? I found two answers. The first is an APP called “If I Die.” According to the site -“Simply install the app on your page, choose three “trustees” (i.e. people who can be relied upon to confirm your sad demise) and record — by text, image, or video — a message that will be published to your feed, upon your death. “ Very creepy!

The other solution is to have a friend post something on your behalf. I like this better! I recently saw an article about two friends who had a plan.  When one died (cancer), the other waited a few days and then used the deceased friend’s password to log onto his Facebook page. He then began posting new status updates “from beyond the grave” as the person who just passed away. He did it for a week with per-arranged updates that they had worked out together before his passing. Here is another one:

In the future, you better made damn sure someone is really, really, really deceased before posting something like that!! Nothing could be stranger than posting a virtual condolence note only to have it responded to with “I AM NOT DEAD YET, ASSHOLE!!”