Last week, I went to hear a familiar voice, one that isn't here anymore. For years, I've been able to click on a button with his face, go to their photos and laugh as I reminisce the good times shared with a friend who passed away. This week was the anniversary of my dad's passing. As I usually do every year, I went to post on his time line on the anniversary of his death. What I found broke my heart into a million pieces. Facebook had officially taken the last bit of what remained of my dad. They'd deleted his profile without warning. For 9 years, his page had been my diary, a way for me to share pieces of my life with him and somehow include him even though his physical body was gone. I'm not the first this has happened to.

According to Facebook, you may request to memorialize a loved one who's passed away but you need their url. Unfortunately, your loved ones profile needs to still be searchable and active in order to find this information, so how can we even request to memorialize them if we don't have access to this? We can't. 

Facebook has taken it upon themselves to deactivate profiles that many rely on to get them through tough times. It should not be up to them to make this decision without making attempts to contact the family. They have our data, they know our interests, our shopping habits, our groups, our relationship statuses. Facebook can collect our data, yet, does it not have the decency to reach out and ask if we'd like to memorialize our loved one's pages? No. No notice. Gone. Just gone. For some of us, this is how we lost our loved ones in life beyond logins... instantly. 

We want our loved ones back. We know they've moved on to whatever is beyond this world but we would like to keep their memory alive as OUR choice and not Facebook's.

We request our loved ones profiles be reinstated and given the option to memorialize their profiles. Facebook, you took pieces of our hearts, our grief and the memory that lived on through their pages in the blink of an eye.

Since we can't call anyone and your support button doesn't address our concern, please listen to the voices of this petition and allow loved ones to make that call and not you.