What would you do if you had a long time blog and something really bad happened in your life? Would you blog about the "bad thing"?
Many bloggers have been at it for six or seven years now. They're blogging about books, politics, parenting, whatever. And then something terrible happens in their personal life – a death, a foreclosure, a divorce, illness. It's inevitable, really. Some blog about it and find the blogging process cathartic. Others make veiled references to the "bad thing" and then go about business as usual.
I've read about tragedies before on the blogs. I remember when Sam lost his son, Aidan. I've also been following Katie Granju as she grieves over her son's death. Right now, she' s nine months pregnant with her fourth children and nearly bedridden with grief. She's blogging a lot about the horror of losing a son.
Apt. 11d 
Well, I kept my breast cancer quiet for a while, then I blogged about parts of it — but, really only the parts that can help others.
My sister died before I started blogging, but I suspect I’d have blogged about that as well.
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I’ve blogged a couple of deaths. If my kids or my husband died, I don’t know. Maybe. I might ask someone else to blog it for me. As weird as it sounds, I feel like there are people out there who’d want to know, who I’d want to know. When I blogged my stepmother’s death in February, my dad was pleased to see so many nice comments.
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I have thought about this. I decided that, if my child or my spouse died suddenly, I would ask a particular friend (someone who started out as an online blog connection but with whom I now have offline ties) to make the announcement in her space. I have a circle of dedicated readers who would almost certainly read it at her blog quickly enough to satisfy propriety.
I would consider sending out a mass email via Facebook, but I would never do a status update with a death announcement.
It’s more complicated when you’re in Katie Granju’s situation. My blog is mostly inactive, but if my child had been assaulted, or someone had been diagnosed with cancer, I might find myself discussing that over time, enough that I would want people to know the outcome.
But I still think I’d have someone else announce an actual death, rather than post it myself. It feels like the equivalent of the cousins who descend on the house to make the phone calls after your dad dies, I guess.
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A couple prominent bloggers have themselves died . . . Steve Gilliard, among others. I’m pretty sure it was also Katie G. who posted obliquely several years ago about her husband leaving her. One blogger I used to read frequently blogged a lot about her brother’s death in a car accident, processing her grief in real time.
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When I lost my newborn daughter (and was maintaining a blog) I did blog about it. My particular blog community was really supportive. But I did find later that I felt a bit like the focus of my blog had shifted a lot. Having a living child has actually constrained my blogging more though, just out of respect for what he might later read.
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I didn’t know you lost a baby, JennG. I’m really sorry.
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I’m so sorry, JennG.
Regardless of who announced the death, I’m sure I’d blog about the after-effects. How could I not?
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I wouldn’t presume to tell someone else what to do in the circumstance of dealing with a serious illness or death. But, I do sometimes worry when I read bloggers who seem to be overly reliant on their online support network. I think online interactions can be wonderful, an important form of support for a variety of things, but I think that it’s easy to get confused about the depth and meaning of relationships that develop (and that’s not even including the whole “on the internet no one knows that you’re a dog” problem). It’s too easy to believe you know people who you don’t really know.
So, I worry about the woman scientist I sometimes read who seems to be experiencing depression, or whether Katie G. needs to be getting more real person support. I worry when the online relationships seem like a replacement rather than an adendum to real life ones.
I will say that Sam’s report and eulogy of his son’s death is a different animal than the online processing that occurs in other blogs. Vicky Forman also reported her son Evan’s death — how could she not and continue blogging when speaking of Evan was a big part of her online writing? But, she didn’t process her grief publicly in quite the same way as occurs on other blogs.
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