After cremation as part of the cremation services offered in Mount Vernon, WA, families who have lost loved ones will begin the journey of processing their grief and adjusting to a new reality. With the advent of social media, grieving can be shared in a new way, but grieving may also be exacerbated at times.

Social media has emerged as one of the biggest assets some people find as they grieve because there’s inherent support built in. But social media can also present some tough challenges to the grieving process as well. One of these challenges can be the memory reminders that Facebook automatically posts. Memory reminders are posted on the day that a post was originally made. If we’ve posted pictures of our loved ones, and they have since died, these memory reminders may be painful.

Facebook operates using all data we put into it. Facebook memories reminders are programmed to remind us on the dates of their anniversaries. These may go back for more than ten years if you created a Facebook account during the company’s infancy.

Some of these Facebook memories will include pictures, anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays when your loved ones were still alive and thriving or they may include the date your loved one died. Whatever these memories contain, they can trigger very intense emotional responses, including sadness and sorrow, because they are unexpected reminders of loss.

How Facebook memories reminders affect you over time can help you see how far you’ve come in the grieving process. The first few years after the loss of a loved one may elicit intense grief when you see these Facebook memories reminders. However, you may find that as more time passes, those same reminders may be reminders happy times and the life you and your loved one shared.

A good way to approach these Facebook memories reminders is to focus on the time when the event with your loved one happened. It may have been a trip or a special occasion. Go back in time and allow yourself to remember the love you shared and the fun you had together. This will help you to not focus on the hole in your life that the death of your loved one has left.

If the Facebook memory reminder is reminding you of your loved one’s birthday, it might be meaning to gather a small group of close friends and family to celebrate. Just because someone dies doesn’t mean the date of their birth is forgotten, so you can choose to celebrate it.

Sharing Facebook memories reminders of your loved one with friends or family enables everyone to remember them and perhaps share their own feelings and memories about them. It gives everyone a chance to digitally connect and remember the person you loved. This can help, because it may also remind you that you’re not alone and that, while you love and miss your loved one, so do many other people who knew them. There can be measurable comfort in the reminder of that knowledge.

Dealing with Facebook memories reminders of your loved one will be very hard in the beginning. Seeing them may be so painful initially that you can’t bear to look at them. But it may be that when some distance is put between their death and the present, these memories will bring happiness and smiles, instead of pain and tears.

For additional information about cremation services, our compassionate and knowledgeable staff at Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory – Bayview Chapel can assist you. We also serve the areas of Bellingham, Ferndale and Mount Vernon, WA. You can stop by our funeral home at 2465 Lakeway Dr., Bellingham, WA 98229 or you can contact us today at (360) 733-0510.