After Tim’s sudden death, Ruby was my comfort and my sidekick. She’d never been allowed into the bedroom at night before, but now when I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep she was curled up on me or at my back, and her purring soothed me.
 
When Dee and her cat and dogs moved in, Ruby lived in my upstairs office during the day, sitting on my desk supervising, and tapping my hand when I didn’t pay her enough attention, and continued to sleep on me at night.

When I stepped out of the door the morning that Tim died, I couldn’t believe that village life could go on as normal when my life had so suddenly and drastically changed. But it did. 
 
Over the years since 2018, I have rebuilt my life, embracing my sexuality, going back to university, meeting and marrying my wonderful Dee, and making a fresh start in a new location.
 
All of these changes have left me sometimes feeling that I'm living two parallel lives. There's the life that I live now and the other that carried on, where I am still married to Tim. We still live above the bookshop. And he is pricing books downstairs.
 
The life we live without them can leave us feeling guilty and resentful. About the what-ifs, the things we did or didn’t say, simply that we survived. And for going on without them. Going to work. Seeing friends and family. Making changes to the house. Enjoying ourselves. Doing things that they will never do, in places that they will never see, and making decisions that they will never know.
 
There’s nothing I can say that makes this better. As Tim would say, it is what it is. We continue without them, moving forward but not moving on. And as a community, we do it together.

So many of us have social media accounts, from Facebook and X/Twitter, through WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, to Snapchat, Pinterest and LinkedIn (and so many more). This digital footprint will live long after we do. Some companies will automatically delete accounts after a certain length of time. Others allow you to make decisions, including deletion and deactivation; these options vary between providers. Deactivating can hide the profile until you decide what to do with it.
 
Keeping accounts open
Social media can be a good way to tell people about a death, but it’s important to tell family and friends first. Keeping accounts open also lets you tell people about any arrangements, allows you to access their photos, videos and posts, and means that family and friends can make posts in memory of them and stay together as a community. However, because other people can post on an open account, this can mean that you see things that may upset you.
 
Memorialising accounts
Memorialised accounts allow people to have a place to remember someone and to read that person’s old posts. The account will make it clear that the person has died, and will no longer send notifications.
 
Deleting accounts
Deleting an account protects you from seeing things on their account that might upset you, but deletion is permanent. Different companies will need different things to close accounts. These are likely to include their full name, their profile name, ID or link, their death certificate, and proof of your relationship with them.
 
Creating a digital will
If you have strong feelings about what will happen to your digital footprint after you die, you need to make plans by creating a digital will. This can include IDs and profile names, and requests to delete or memorialise accounts.