Facebook, Yearbooks, and Mortality

Facebook has its pros and cons...you all probably know about them whether you are on there or not. It's great for communicating to groups of people and staying in touch with friends who are far away, but it is also a time-sucker and can present an artificial view of the way things really are. In the past few months, Facebook has made me excited about moving back to my hometown in Orange County as I see posts from old friends and imagine what my life will be like there. I know it won't be the same as when I left after high school, but I'm not the same as I was when I graduated high school. Thankfully.

Ironically, in the last few months, I have gotten my high school yearbooks out a number of times (each time wondering why I store such a heavy box up so high with other heavy boxes balancing precariously on top) to look up faces of people I have randomly come across in our job search in Orange County. People who I wasn't sure were headed down a great path when I last knew them. People who now are employed or volunteering in ministries or jobs where they are helping others. That's pretty cool (it's worth risking my neck (literally) to pull those heavy boxes down to get out the yearbooks for verification).

In the last couple of weeks I have found out--through Facebook--about the recent and sudden deaths of two of my former high school classmates. So sad. They weren't people I was extremely close with, but I still have specific memories of each of them and it makes me sad to see their lives suddenly come to an end.

Facebook offers a strange, sweet, sad opportunity for people to publicly record their condolences and reactions to someone's death and I have spent extra time on Facebook reading and thinking about the people who have died and the people who are grieving for them. I have scrolled backwards through the posts, reading each one, seeing other names I recognize, and trying to glean information about the last days of these two people's lives. Then, suddenly, I come upon the last post that each one wrote while they were still living...and it feels like a sudden shock--like they walked into the room alive again and spoke...but then I realize it is just that I have scrolled back in time far enough to get a glimpse of them living again.

Kevin and Keri at El Dorado High School

Kevin's last posts were pictures and birthday greetings, but here is Keri's last post:  

"Boys r so excited 2 see the annual Fiesta Flambuea Night Parade.!!!! VIVA FIESTA TEXAS STYLE!! We got seats closer to the starting point!!! Love our family!!!"

What a reminder of how suddenly the end of life can come for us. Facebook by no means is the sum total of these two people's lives...they both had jobs and families and so many things that were going on that I can't see from watching through that blue and white webpage, but their last words seem to echo with a deeper meaning...one that I learned when my close friend and roommate in college was killed suddenly in an accident:  

"It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. " (Ecclesiastes 7:2, from the Bible)

My son, Evan, under my grandmother's casket

On a happier note, I found out on Facebook recently that two of my former 6th grade classmates who went on to different high schools reconnected later in life and married. This week, they announced the birth of their daughter, Clarissa Thérèse Kuan Sambrano:

Her mother, Jean (who is diagonally up to the right from me in the first yearbook picture), posted this on my Facebook page:  
"haha Kaci! if someone had told me in 6th grade that i was going to marry Nolan (who never spoke to me) and have babies, i'd have thought they were crazy!"

Congratulations, Nolan and Jean!  

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 
a time to be born and a time to die, 
a time to plant and a time to uproot, 
a time to kill and a time to heal, 
a time to tear down and a time to build, 
a time to weep and a time to laugh, 
a time to mourn and a time to dance, 
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, 
a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 
a time to search and a time to give up, 
a time to keep and a time to throw away, 
a time to tear and a time to mend, 
a time to be silent and a time to speak, 
a time to love and a time to hate, 
a time for war and a time for peace, 
What does the worker gain for his toil? 
I have seen the burden God has laid on men.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-11)