Most people think that living without the internet seems like a horrible thing. To me, it sounds like the perfect escape. Society today is so consumed by the internet and technology, that no one seems to be focused on the important things in our lives. We should be focusing on what is happening around us as people. Without the internet, my life would be so much more simple, yet so much darker.

Three years ago in May, my grandma was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My mother and grandfather were her support system as well as her caretakers. When she first started treatment and she still looked healthy, I would visit her practically every day. I would sit by her bed on her bad days and drive around town with her on her good days. However, after she started getting sicker and looking worse, I started visiting less. I would use technology as an escape and to avoid her. It would be easy for me to say that it was the internet’s fault and that it is because technology is consuming us, but that would not be the truth. I stopped visiting her because I hated seeing my grandma, my best friend, like that. I hated seeing her all worn and gray and tired, barely able to speak and do much at all. She died two years ago, September 18th, 2014, on my fifteenth birthday at 5:08 am.

Those last few months I had spent holed up in my room on my mom and I’s facebook page, looking at pictures at my grandma when she was still healthy. I regretted that decision, and I still do every day. I should have been in her hospital room, visiting with her while I still had her, while she was still alive. I didn’t know that I would be spending months after her death, doing the same thing as I was right before she died, trying to remember her by scouring the internet to find any memories of her smile or her laugh or the way she used to dance while pushing her walker through a store. I should have been spending those last few months staying with her and celebrating her life, instead of mourning her before she was even gone.

These days I like to think that she’s forgiven me for letting her die in my head before she actually died outside the screen. I think about if we didn’t have the internet if I would actually go and visit her during those last few months instead of trying to distract myself with something else. The fault isn’t in the technology or in the internet, the fault is in ourselves and that we use technology to cope and distract ourselves. Without the technology we would still find a way to distract ourselves, maybe even new ways for distraction. I hope that someone out there who is watching a loved one die, isn’t trying to hide behind their screen as a way of comfort, but instead is embracing their loved ones and celebrating their life.