I always wanted Patrick to have a smartphone so it would be easier to send pictures and texts back and forth. And of course I wanted to send him cute emoticons! He was anti-mainstream and would never choose to do something just because that’s what everyone did. Once he dropped his phone in the lake and I had a new phone for him before he got home. He had made comments about not wanting a phone and I didn’t want him driving around without one. Unfortunately that was before smartphones or that’s what I would have bought him! His flip phone was so ancient that they were sending him messages that it would no longer be supported.
He was also fiercely anti social media. He didn’t want any internet presence but finally began to allow videos on Youtube. He didn’t understand the appeal of Facebook. I found some of his fraternity brothers and became friends with them just so we would have a way to contact them if he ever wanted to. One time I noticed that one of them was online and I told him he. Plus chat with him. He got on my computer and they chatted for a few minutes. Then he wanted to know the protocol for ending the conversation. He felt it was kind of impersonal and awkward.
Many of you would be surprised to learn that he DID create a Facebook account several months before he died. He decided that it would be a nice way to store photos and videos but he wanted it to be secret. He was really annoyed that he needed his own email address to do it since I was using the one I shared with him. After he created a gmail account he started working on his secret Facebook profile. Then he got annoyed with some of the things he was being asked and said it was too complicated. He deleted the account but was mad that it would take 14 days. Then he tried to delete his gmail but they required a forwarding address so he was mad about that too and went on a rant about how ridiculous it was. Since April many people have pointed out the irony of his large internet presence now.
I’ll admit I wished he was on Facebook so I could put him on my relationship status. I know that is silly since neither one of us needed an affirmation of love. But I was always proud to be his wife so I was bummed that he wasn’t on Facebook.
Today I decided to edit my Facebook profile. I took out the happily married mother of two wording a while back but couldn’t bring myself to change my relationship status from married to widowed. I didn’t want it to be like I was advertising my status. I decided to check the profiles of a few other widows I know and what I found broke my heart. A few didn’t list a relationship status and a few said still married. A lot said married to …with a link to the husband’s profile. I can’t imagine how much harder that would make it because they would need to delete their relationship in order to change their status! Suddenly I was glad he wasn’t on Facebook! And yes, it did occur to me that maybe I shouldn’t point out the relationship status to my widowed friends. I laughed as soon as I thought this because of course they know that they are no longer married.
I did end up changing my status to widowed. I just felt like it was time.