Funeral faux pas and other unspoken rules of grief

A personal postscript to my TIME piece on digital mourning etiquette.

TW: grief, death, suicide

Today, I published a piece with TIME about the unspoken rules of mourning online.

I wrote about funeral selfies, Facebook memorial groups, mourning-by-emoji, and fan tributes. I interviewed people about their own losses and how they perceive others' grief: what feels performative, what feels sincere; what makes them cringe, what makes them cry. I also spoke to experts about competitive and hierarchical grief—terms that rarely surface in public, despite being painfully common—and how social media both exposes and exacerbates those tensions.

I reported on these thorny dynamics because I’ve genuinely never seen them articulated. We live them. We text a friend about a tone-deaf Instagram tribute from a distant acquaintance. Our moms make snide comments about our aunt’s funeral attire. We get mad when our cousins break news that “wasn’t theirs to share.” The landmines are everywhere, but they are invisible—rules that only become obvious when transgressed.

While this story feels personal to me—an attempt to make sense of my own feelings about these odd behaviors—I remain decidedly absent from the article itself. To unpack the ways in which we self-police grief was tricky enough without adding my own judgements. Too many cooks.

But my grief investigation cracked something open. I time traveled. Each thread I unraveled contained the tenderness of my own loss, resentment, disapproval.

I’d like to share some vignettes from my life—fictionalized and composite in nature—that came screaming to the surface while reporting this story. While rooted in personal memory and emotional truth, details have been altered or imagined for privacy.

High school.

I had two friends freshman year who were closer with each other than they were with me. One night in December, we took the train into Manhattan to get our cartilages pierced on St. Marks.

It was on ripped, leather seats and with a bloodied industrial bar through the top of my ear that—in the spirit of friendship—one friend told me she had tried to kill herself last summer. My ear throbbed as she told me about taking all the pills in her house—Xanax and ibuprofen mostly—and about calling the other friend in a panic who told her to drink an entire quart of milk to purge the pills. It was great advice. I felt young and naive that I wouldn’t have known to suggest that, which made sense as to why she hadn’t called me, though I wished she had.

But mostly I was hurt they hadn’t told me for so many months. Their secret was more than just pills and vomit, it was that they understood life in ways they knew I couldn’t grasp, and had only filled me in because of the metal bars being lodged into our skin, and what that represented. They shared their binding secret for the sake of this moment, which I would have otherwise tainted by being oblivious. I was their audience, which they performed a close friendship for.

I didn’t think to ask if she still wanted to kill herself or how she was doing now. I didn’t think about her at all. As they discussed where we would go get pho, I thought about myself, and how I would forever be on the outside of this triad. Save for moments around other, more clueless people. I was a visitor of their intimacy and I sat there, cheeks flushed and eyes bleary, mad that they had been so selfish.

Summer camp.

Kylie, pigeon-toed and knobby-kneed, arrived at sleep-away camp one summer seeming different. Slower to laugh and quicker to cry. Her sister had just died, a counselor told us, and we had to take care of her. Little things like making sure she had someone to walk to the outhouses with or grabbing her water bottle on the way to fill up our own.

One night, Kylie, who had been tight-lipped about the whole ordeal, turned on her headlamp and told us the story. We climbed down from our bunks and nestled at the foot of hers. She told us about how she was home, doing some math homework and watching CSI. She had a school dance later that week and had asked to borrow a dress from her sister. She clomped upstairs to peruse. She knocked on the door— her sister, 16, was so moody these days. She knocked again, louder. She squeaked the door open and peered in. Her sister, Jenna, hanged from the ceiling fan, heavy, slack, like a full bag of laundry held over a railing by its string. She closed her eyes and ran out, but the image wouldn’t erase from her mind, she told us. Her dad sobbed as he heaved his strangled daughter down from the ceiling. Her mom wailed, long guttural howls; she paced up and down the stairs, wailing like this—like moaning boat horns—as they waited for paramedics. We sat at her feet as she cried and cradled her knees, nauseous and awkward. Awkward that there was nothing to say in the face of true, unbearable horror.

After this, the group dynamic started to shift. She was no longer a member of a tribe, but a resource to secure. There were privileges that came from Kylie’s sad circumstance. Walks during swim time—the water was so cold and weed-filled. Visits with nurse Eileen who had lollipops and AC. But aligning with Kylie gave you more than perks—it came with intrigue, and a gripping story.

One evening, honeysuckle and burning maple thick in the air, I remember walking back from the showers, squishing and slapping down the path with dripping flip-flops. A posse of 10 or so girls perched on log benches and shaved their legs, whipped cream only to the knee, like half-dipped eclairs. One of our bunkmates had a group of younger campers rapt, their razors suspended in anticipation. And then her mom started running up and down the stairs, she said, dipping her razor into a metal bucket of sudsy water. The mom cried out in long, deep moans. Jenna, Jenna, Jenna.

I’m 23.

I found out that Lauren died on a Monday.

In a college friend group of fourteen, Lauren was everyone’s favorite. She was the kind of friend that everyone felt they were closest with, privately vying for the position of her best friend. She escaped this losing predicament by being kind and inclusive, letting us all believe she may have liked us best.

Lauren moved to Boston after college for a job where she peddled software to companies for decent money. By all accounts, she was thriving. She was dating a tall and handsome man in real estate who ate her out just the way she liked. She had adopted a French bulldog who liked to sleep on her pillow. She was up for a promotion, a manager position where she’d work with the same spirit of mediocrity but for more money. A month later and a week after she got the promotion, I received a phone call that she was dead.

A friend of mine who never called, called—and her hello warned something terrible. She said it plainly, that our friend, Lauren, had died. She didn’t have to say how. I knew in every inch of my body. We cried on the phone together not saying much. They found her yesterday, she eventually added. And we both cried harder.

In college, our crew was very fond of Xanax. We had a dealer just for bars and even a quarter of the green pressed powder stick could knock you out for the day and then some. We drank on them, which led to a deathly kind of black out, one so pitch black, it was a group sport piecing our nights together in the morning. We blacked out religiously and conducted our sermons from the couch sectional, singing tales of blind depravity through violent fits of laughter.

Once, an appalled grad student, freckled and plump, knocked on our door with a frosty Lauren slung over his shoulders like a messenger bag. Her braids were frozen, like two popsicles dangling on each breast. She was covered in snow and had peed herself. I found your friend in the snow, he said, as he hoisted Lauren toward us. I thought she was dead. We thanked him and received Lauren, who hiccuped. She was asleep in the snow, he said again slower this time, with squinted, sanctimonious eyes, waiting for the correct reaction from us. But instead, we laughed at his panicked face. We were monsters to him, standing there in our ketchup-stained pajamas, unflappable. He didn’t get that the joke was so clear. She didn’t die, she had pissed herself.

So I knew that she had overdosed. I had high school friends die of this violent trio before: Xanax, alcohol, and coke. She had loved all three and loved them even more together.

As I sat there numb, processing something unprocessable, I started to receive messages. It couldn’t have been more than an hour since my friend had called, that my phone was ablaze with grave diggers—dismembering my friend’s death and selling the parts. It was impressive how quickly word spread. Group text chats that normally discussed face sunscreens, Hinge profiles, and concert dates suddenly turned into a crisis call center, fielding information like TMZ. Her death to them was no different than Matthew Perry’s. Ping! Did you guys hear? Ping! How did it happen? Ping! Someone found her in the bathroom. Ping! Was it pills? The vultures—their beaks bloodied with warm carcass—hadn’t even been friends with her in college. She was just a cautionary tale, a token of gossip, a fading memory of someone they took a shot with once.

All the girls who were closest with her flew to her hometown for the funeral. One that lived nearby put us up, lining her living room floor with blow up mattresses. Conner hasn’t even texted me, one friend said, kicking off her Converse and flopping down into the middle of the bedding. Has he texted any of you? Shaking heads. What about Tyler? The conversation proceeded into who had and had not texted us (Tyler had. Conner had not), who did and did not posted condolences and memories (Caroline had time to post a photo of her three mile run but not her former sorority little was d.e.a.d.), and who posted a tribute but really shouldn’t have because Did You Even Know Her (Emma. Attention whore whose photos with Lauren featured her 15 pounds skinnier. We Know Why You Did That). Naughty and nice the list went, who loved her in the right and wrong ways.

Then came the Lauren stories. Most of them everyone knew faithfully, and we’d take turns adding in detail, like scripture of our friend group. But there were also our own stories—personal—sacred moments shared between speaker and Lauren. They mostly hinged around a distinct kind of intimacy that outshone other relationships. Stories where Lauren had confided in them, and them alone. Stories where their closeness eclipsed, triumphed, vanquished another. Tonight became the opening ceremony for the unspoken battle of the best friend. I wrote something, someone said, pulling out their phone Notes app. I can read this at her funeral. Someone chimes in: Or your wedding.

I’m going to have an empty bridesmaid's seat for her, says a voice.

She’d be my maid of honor.

It was a grim morning as we got dressed in our blacks. Most of us had purchased cheap black dresses at a crappy store for the occasion. We would never wear these again. We were never known for being appropriate, and as we made our way to the kitchen for a quick bite before we left for the church, we looked like elder club rats who cried off their make-up. Frankie, why are you wearing heels? someone barked across the granite island.

I saw that hot Theta girl wear heels to Jordan’s funeral. I don’t know, thought it looked chic, Frankie said, pouring some milk into her coffee.

Fuck, that was sad. Heard his Mom lost her shit—threw herself on top of the dirt when they were burying him and wouldn’t get up.

He was just about to start med school at Harvard. Like kids’ cancer or something.

What was it again? Bad molly? Fucking fentanyl. That shit’s in everything.

Nods. Maybe that’s what happened to Lauren, I said absentmindedly, as I unwrapped a chocolate protein bar. There was screeching silence. The loudest people I knew, stood mute and erect. Their eyes were wild with dread and panic.

A hand was on my back, then a slipped arm over my shoulder. Their silence pressed tight against me. It was revolting to see them look at me like this, their unwelcome pity, like the infinite moment before an execution.

Lauren killed herself, Frankie said.

We had the same information it seemed, but I could feel we were terrifically unaligned. My stomach bucked. Right, but… I tried to steady the world. Maybe she didn’t mean to, you know…

Their eyes swallowed me, tucked me into their bellies. She hanged herself.

With a belt.

We thought you knew.

I dropped onto the tiled floor with a thud. On all fours, I heaved like a stuck pig. I pictured my lovely Lauren, purple and puffy. I pictured Kylie’s sister, swinging laundry, and her mother doing suicides up the staircase. What about her puppy? Her lover? What about the promotion and the software? A flock of women in black lowered to the ground beside me, and began retching intel like it was their democratic duty. What Amber had told Frankie. A phone call Maia had with Lauren’s mom. Data from the roommates, coworkers, neighbors. Text threads from the night it happened. Final words, selfies, and phone calls. I was swollen with unwanted information.

The trek from the kitchen floor to the pew was a blur. I was dazed in this bleak realization of Lauren’s death—a new kind of death—one more decisive, violent, final. All the stories we had shared the night before: when she choked out a freshman who cut us in the O’Malley’s bathroom line; how she gave head to Reid Wallace with raging strep—didn’t care that his long dick scraped up and down her inflamed throat—weren’t these a testament to her scrappiness, someone who would fight to stay alive?

We arrived early so we could pack into the two rows behind her family. Everyone else would fend for seats in the back. The decrepit pastor with flaky skin made his way to the stand, and I wondered what platitudes he would say about Lauren—the woman whose ugliness was as tender and potent as her beauty. The chapel was burdened with bodies. Even in death, Lauren was popular.

A young woman with fried blonde hair and swimming shoulders, descended down the aisle. It was Cassidy, Lauren’s friend from Boston, the roommate who had discovered Lauren’s body. No one was more at the center of this tragedy than Cassidy. Cassidy, whose hulking arms had hacked her down. Cassidy, who called the cops, the ambulance, Lauren’s mother. She made arrangements with the transport service and for the little Frenchie, confused and panting. Relief washed over her face when she saw our group. The pew sighed as she scooted into the aisle toward us.

She wasn’t friends with us in college, I heard whispered into our fleshy pit. Boston was in the row behind. Hey, Cassidy, Frankie said, poking a bicep, I think these two rows are just going to be us. Red and yellow light painted our bloated faces as the afternoon sun spilled through stained-glass windows. Cassidy stood up and walked to the back.