I don’t often burst into tears when scrolling through TikTok, but about a week ago I was floored by a girl’s video of her and her dad.
Similar to me, her dad had died from a brain tumour after being fit and healthy his whole life. The girl had spliced footage of them laughing together as they renovated her first home, chipping away old tiles, ripping up carpets and sharing a celebratory high five every step of the way.
I couldn’t help but feel devastated by how beautiful this snapshot of their life together was.
I’m always moved by how much life oozes out of these videos as they capture these intimate, private everyday moments, which at the end of the day are the things you miss the most. Sharing space with your loved one, enjoying their company, laughing over nothing and celebrating the small wins.
As a late 20-something who lost her dad at 16, this isn’t the first time that GriefTok has seeped into my For You page. I take so much comfort that I’m not alone in my grief and that there are people who understand those deep, dark, confusing emotions that can make you feel so isolated,
But I’m also left feeling slightly bereft by the quality of these videos and photos.
Back in 2012, when Blackberrys were still all the rage and iPhone 5s were still weighing down your coat pockets, my dad was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of brain tumour: a glioblastoma.
Google even called it ‘The Terminator’ so quite honestly, it was a blessing that my Dad had a sense of humour about the news.
For the next 10 months, my family and I spent all our time together, trying to savour every moment and freeze it in time by snapping it away on our phones and digital camera. In the end, we knew that’s all we’d have left of dad – our memories and our photographs.
We documented everything; time in the hospice, time by the beach, long dog walks, flipping pancakes, singing in the kitchen, but most of these were photos – a snapshot of these moments before my dad passed away in May 2013.
Thankfully, my parents loved making home videos, but these grainy, hazy views of Christmas mornings or summer holidays from the early 2000s are nothing compared to the quality of footage today.
Earlier this year, when I lost two of my closest family friends, Norma and Angie, who I’d known since I was born and were practically family, I was struck by how different grieving is in the digital age.
When I inevitably missed them, especially in the first few weeks, I had an immense archive of videos and voicemails, as well as photos to scroll through.
I’d listen to a recent voicemail from Norma, or watch videos of us all playing games at the Christmas table, just a few weeks before she died.
It’s all tinged with a painful poignance, but I found such comfort in revisiting these snippets of our time together. I didn’t have to remember what her voice sounded like, the melody of her laugh or how her face moved when she smiled, as I had so many different angles of it right there in front of me.
Sure, Norma and Angie are still frozen in time, but it’s so much more than one snapshot of them; it’s an animated snippet of them living. They look and feel as alive as I remember them.
For the first time, I started to feel a pang of jealousy for people who grieve for their parents in the digital age, as they have unknowingly captured the most precious kind of memories and crafted a time capsule of their time with their parents or loved ones.
I desperately wish I had more videos of my dad, of him laughing, hugging me, talking to me, being ridiculously silly as always. I have three, maybe four iPhone 5-quality videos, as well as some restored camcorder footage that offers a blurry view of my childhood.
All of them I have watched thousands of times, I could practically recite them from memory.
I’m grateful that I was an avid photo taker, even before Dad was diagnosed. As the designated family documentarian, some of the greatest photos of my dad – ones that capture the wrinkles on his forehead, to the different shades of his eyes and the never-ending joy in his smile mid-laugh – were taken by me.
But videos are something else entirely.
It’s not about having something to post on social media, it’s about having more of who that person was when they were alive to see and remember.
With the rise of TikTok, it’s more ingrained in us than ever before to take videos of everything and anything and it’s never been easier to shoot something high-quality from your phone.
Since I moved back in with my mum during the pandemic, I have a plethora of videos of her. Baking, dancing, singing, laughing, zoning out while enthralled by the latest Netflix crime drama, every clip leaves me beaming every single time I watch them.
I wish I had the same for my dad, as I know how precious the videos I do have are to me. I find it painful that I didn’t have that opportunity to document my dad in that way, as I know it would be such a comfort in my grief, even all these years later.
I could never have known how much I’d want more of his life on film, but it’s such a special way to keep that connection to your loved one alive, when they’re gone.
Even if you’re chronically offline, document everything on your phone. Take it from someone who doesn’t have an archive of HD quality videos of their loved one laughing, but studies the lines of their face in old photographs as my mind fills in the blanks of their voice and their mannerisms.
Film your loved ones doing anything or simply doing nothing. Laughing at the TV, cuddling your dog, as one day it’ll be all you’ll have left and you’ll cherish it more than I can ever express.
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