In This Real Life: Quantum Mechanics, Social Media, and Grief

Yesterday, I Tweeted this link to a science article about Sean Carroll, one of my favorite theoretical physicists. (Most of my friends memorize the statistics for their favorite athletes. If theoretical physicists had their own set of trading cards, I would collect them all). The article discusses the evolving and more-and-more likely probability that there are alternate universe versions of ourselves populating a multiverse of realities. This idea should be old news to anyone who’s read more than three of my books or stories. Indeed, it’s a theory which provides the backbone to every fictional thing I have ever written.

This morning, David J. Schow shared a wonderful essay by Laura Lippman entitled The Art Of Losing Friends And Alienating People . One of the things that struck me the most about the article is the comparison about interacting with friends in real life versus interacting with them via social media.

It has been many months since I quit Facebook. I didn’t quit by choice. Facebook gave me no choice. They told myself and a number of other public figures who maintained private pseudonymous accounts that we had to use our real names on those accounts or we’d be banned from the platform. In my case, since that pseudonymous account was directly linked to the Brian Keene Facebook Page, and I didn’t want to lose that real estate, I turned the page over to Ron Davis, Stephen Kozeniweski, and Mary SanGiovanni to operate, and then I quit Facebook.

My mental health has improved tenfold since then, as has my blood pressure. And I wasn’t even aware there was a problem with the first.

One of the detriments to quitting, however, was that there are a lot of friends who interact with others primarily through Facebook only. Take, for example, director Mike Lombardo. I have known Mike since he was seventeen years old. I have watched him grow from an eager and talented kid into one of the most promising, talked about indie-horror directors of his generation. I legitimately think of Mike as another son. But even though he only lives 30 minutes away, I haven’t heard much from him since I left Facebook. So a few weeks ago, while I was still battling that infection, and had convinced myself that the antibiotics weren’t going to stop it and that this was in fact how I was going to die, I called Mike just to check in. We ended up talking for a good half hour, and he caught me up on everything that was going on in his life. That connection made me laugh. It made my day.

Tomorrow, November 10th, J.F. Gonzalez will have been gone five years. The morning of his passing is still a vivid memory for me. I remember every detail as clearly as I remember the births of my children. I have tried for five years to heal from that wound, and while I have succeeded in building up a tough scab, not a week goes by where I don’t leak some blood from around the seams. That’s tough for any human being. It’s doubly tough for a high-functioning sociopath like myself. We have a tendency to push away anything that might hurt us. But you can’t push away ghosts.

A friend asked me why I thought it was tougher for me to make peace with Jesus’s death than it was Dallas (Jack Ketchum) Mayr’s or Tom Piccirilli’s. After all, next July, Pic will join Jesus in the hallowed halls of the Been Gone Five Years club. I was as close to Pic as I was Jesus, and I loved Dallas like…not a father figure, but the best uncle I’ve ever had.

I think it comes down to real life interactions. Jesus lived nearby. I saw him in real life all the time. We got together frequently for lunch or coffee or to visit used bookstores or comic shops or concerts. Sometimes we got together with Robert Swartwood or Chet Williamson or Mike Lombardo. Sometimes we hung out in an extended group with Geoff Cooper, Kelli Owen, Robert Ford and others. Sometimes we hung out with my kid or his kid. (One of my favorite memories is he and I taking his daughter to see the Evil Dead remake, and noticing him noticing just how much like him his daughter was becoming).

Pic, by contrast, I only saw at conventions, or if I was passing through Colorado, or if he was out here on the East Coast. And as we both got more popular, which leads to being busier, we did fewer conventions. Thus, we had to rely on email and phone calls and social media. Pic and I used to send each other care packages. I’d send him comics and music. He’d send me crime novels and weird foreign films. Those regular monthly packages brought us both great joy, and were much better than a comment on a Facebook status update, because they felt personal. And it was the same with Dallas. I saw him at conventions, or if I was in New York, and we’d spend the evening drinking in his favorite bar. But as his health began to fade, there were fewer and fewer of those times.

There’s an alternate reality out there where I died instead of my friends. And there are alternate realities out there where none of us have died yet. There’s an alternate reality where Dallas and I got to write the KETCHUM-KEENE collaboration we’d begun making notes on right before he got sick for the final time (you know those stickers on the backs of cars that show how many kids and dogs someone has in their family? A serial killer choosing his victims based on those). There’s an alternate reality where Pic and I got to write that Defenders relaunch we’d always dreamed about doing together. There’s an alternate reality where Jesus and I went on to write four more Clickers novels together. I know this to be true.

But in this reality, in this real life, I grieve my friends still, and I grieve Jesus the most because of the consistent real-life interactions that are now missing.

Tomorrow, in honor of Jesus, instead of posting to your friend’s wall on Facebook, go visit them in person. Or, if that’s not possible, then give them a call. Speak to them. Instead of reading a comment from them on social media, give them a call and hear their voice.

It’s important to do that. Because at some point in this reality, that voice will fall silent, and all the social media interactions in the world won’t help you remember what they sounded like.

Brian Keene and J.F. Gonzalez.

Brian Keene and Tom Piccirilli.

Brian Keene and Jack Ketchum