One Fewer Steve DeRose on Facebook

(Written by Steve on Facebook three and a half years ago.)

All the Steve DeRoses on Facebook - September 8, 2009

If you search for Steve DeRose on Facebook, there are 17 of us and clearly I am the most handsome although the one in Cincinnati is cute enough to be gay. There’s a Steve DeRose leaning against a wooden fence with his significant other that seems nice, but his friends look a little creepy. I swear I saw one of them on last night’s episode of “Gangland”.

Steve DeRose from Washington DC is on Facebook, and if you Bing or Google Steve DeRose he comes up. He’s one of the inventors of xml and he’s a brilliant computer guy. Like me. I’ve often wondered if any old friends ever look for me and find him. I wonder if they think “Jeeeeesus, Steve lost a ton of weight”. He also has the derose.net domain, but I have stevederose.com. One of these days I’m going to do something with that darn domain.

There’s a Steven DeRose in Ft. Wayne, IN where my wife’s grandfather lives. If I ever meet my grandfatherinlaw I wonder if that will freak him out. I’d say “Hi Grandpa Kendall, I’m Steve DeRose” and he’d say “No you’re not!”. Then I’d show him my driver’s license and he’d go “Jeeeeesus, you’ve put on a ton of weight”. Hmm, better not go to Ft. Wayne.

Steve DeRoses are global: There’s one in London and one in France, and there’s one in Ontario and one studying at ITI Guglielmo Marconi in Italy. And then there’s one Steve DeRose whose facebook picture is his eyeball. Steve DeRoses are a creative artistic lot.

Stephen DeRose from Medford Oregon spells his name exactly like I do: StePHen. However I’m certain we have nothing in common. He looks a little like a meth dealer and I look like… what exactly the hell do I look like? Many years ago my best friend in High School said I looked like a smiling tomato so I’ll go with that. Except now I look like a smiling tomato with a goatee and a balding head. Come to think of it, I did look like a smiling tomato, as opposed to my best friend in High School who looked like the Puerto Rican version of Mark Spitz, only chubbier.

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I did something last month I never thought I'd do when Steve died. I had his Facebook account deleted.

I had been contemplating it for over a year. After the first year mark passed, I was the only person posting on his wall. I was the only person still tagging him in pictures. It was like I was the only person still remembering him.

I know that isn't true. I know many people still thought about him. Maybe even often. But they weren't sharing it with me. And after a year where his name wasn't mentioned during holiday phone calls (which rarely even took place on the holiday), where no one called me on the day of our wedding anniversary, his birthday, or the one year marking of his death, I was tired of walking around thinking about him alone. I wanted people to call me on those landmark days. I needed them to say his name and share some memories with me. Hopefully ones I had never heard before. I was tired of feeling like I was alone in grieving his absence. Alone in being his memory-keeper.

So, it was a year after Steve died when I first started thinking about deleting his Facebook page.

I didn't want to be hasty, though. I didn't want to make an irreversible decision as a knee-jerk emotional reaction. I started talking to friends and asking for their thoughts. I received a range of comments from "People grieve differently" to "They just don't know what to say to you" to "You're too sensitive."

I understood all of it. People DO grieve differently. I've learned that just by talking to other widows. People DON'T know what to say to me. The smart ones fessed up they don't know what to say but most people walked away thinking I have plenty of other support, not realizing that everyone else around me was thinking and doing the exact same as them. And, yes, I WAS too sensitive. I felt as though my skin had been flayed off and every passing breeze was torture. It didn't help that my father died just after the one year anniversary of Steve's death, throwing me back into the depths of depression.

But there was one thing no one had the courage to say to me. The one thing I secretly knew anyway. That mostly, people had moved on and weren't thinking of Steve very often. It was right, and normal, and the way life progresses. Doesn't mean it wasn't difficult to know that while everyone else could go about their lives, I was still struggling to get through each day without the man I married next to me.

I kept his Facebook page up for another year and a half. I checked his page every day, posted on his page occasionally, tagged him in pictures regularly. Because, though it pained me to see no one else doing those things, I still needed to do them.

Something changed for me this past year as the holidays approached. I started getting angry. Not at Steve. At the people in my life. At the people in Steve's life. At all the people who had been uncomfortable in my presence because they didn't know what to say. At the people who thought I was an interesting freak show to watch up close and personal. At the people who saw my weakness and tried to take advantage of me. At myself. Myself, for bending over backwards trying to help them feel comfortable when it should have been the other way around. Myself, for not having the strength to tell the freak show watchers and advantage takers takers to fuck off; instead just walking away from them and hoping they'd disappear. Myself, for wanting to stretch out my time with a dead man by hearing about him from the mouths of others.

That's when I stopped, took stock, and realized: I'm not alone. Steve is imbedded in my very being. I can quit hoping people will share memories of Steve with me, cause I have my own to keep me company. And I will share those memories freely cause I no longer care if people are uncomfortable. And I will tell indiscreet people to fuck off cause my strength has returned to me. I can let go of checking Steve's Facebook page every day cause I carry him with me everywhere I go.

And that's the day I decided to delete his Facebook page. But not before checking, one last time, that I had downloaded his page in it's entirety. I'm angry, not stupid.

(P.S. For those looking for information about memorializing a Facebook account, I wrote a post about it here: Memorializing a Facebook Account.)