SOMETIMES I WONDER IF MY COUSIN KNOWS THAT I AM HANGING around her Facebook like a ghost, like a fiend. Technology lets us believe we are living parallel lives, both in and out of the world, both here and there. I can skim the facts of other people’s lives from their posts like foam from boiled milk. How many people, when my mother died, came to my page to wish me love and light? How many returned time and again looking for some clue of my pain or anguish or grief? Isn’t that what we do? We scent a tragedy in the air and we try to trace it—not to its source, but to those most affected. We try
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