Back in 2019, the Facebook app rested on the second page of my iPhone’s home screen, relegated there along with the other little-used programs. When my finger would find itself hovering over the blue “F” icon, it was merely out of habit. A reflexive impulse from the pre-Instagram decade, when mobile uploads and Facebook walls ruled my social existence.
But when I aimlessly logged on to Facebook on May 16 of that year, instead of scrolling through my feed’s typical posts of happy-birthday messages and geotagged images from friends of my parents, I was met with a status update that stopped me in my tracks. Alissa had died.
