The author reflects on their experience as a sympathy note screener for an online memorial company. They detail the challenges of reviewing condolence messages, often riddled with typos and autocorrect errors, and the surprising lack of offensive content in the comments they screened. The author also highlights the struggle of bowdlerizing references to family fallouts and estrangement, which often led to their own reflections on their fractured family relationships. The Covid-19 pandemic brought a new wave of entries, with differing opinions on the virus. Ultimately, the author muses on the impact of their job on their perception of time and life, suggesting that the language around grief would benefit from communicating only in typos.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/26/online-sympathy-condolence-notes-screening