Photoshopped pictures with departed loved ones?

I contemplated starting a thread about this recently, OP, but didn’t want to face the backlash I knew it would inevitably incur. I don’t agree with it, but understand it brings comfort to others.

I have experienced the loss of a close family member, so know how painful it is when they are absent for family events etc. But part of the grieving process is accepting the fact they won’t be present during these times, and finding other ways of remembering them instead.

I also wonder how it would be confusing for someone looking back at old photos in several years time, and they can’t work out why Grandma is in the family photo, but she died 30 years previously.

That those videos exist exist? Or that it’s equivalent?

You’re not serious…?

Do people who think this is a perfectly normal thing to do also think the Charlie Kirk AI-generated videos of him walking around in heaven hand in hand with Jesus are all totally non-weird too?

Agree, any photoshopped picture you're pretending is real is really weird.

What the heck? Is that a thing? Sounds like something from a horror movie.

Not something I'd do personally but each to their own.

No, I can’t, and I have experienced several extremely traumatic bereavements of close relatives. Faking a photo of my dead dad holding my baby or giving me away at a wedding that actually happened thirty years after his death would be weird beyond belief.

It’s not for me, but if it brings someone else some happiness, comfort or whatever, then that’s a good thing, There is no harm in it, so although I don’t really understand it, I don’t have to understand everything.

Pretty much most of other people's lives and choices in general.

Well, their body was there, but it’s not quite the same, especially if they’re propped up with one of those vices around the back of the head to keep them upright.

Well each to their own but I find it very mawkish.

I can absolutely see how it can bring comfort to the bereaved, but all I can think of is people in the future being puzzled when they try to trace their family history and view these pictures. It will be rather confusing seeing photos of family groups, some of whom died perhaps years before the pictures were taken.

call me weird if you like. I don’t care. If you don’t like it don’t look. It’s one photo in my house. Is it only that photo that bothers you? Why? Why not take down all photos of all dead people?

I have done this.

My mother died before I got my degree (I was a mature student) but they were in my heart every single step.

I’ve got a picture of me in my robes with her standing beside me - off to one side and slightly behind. Because I carry her with me in my heart always.

And god but she would have loved to have survived long enough to see it. But cancer had other ideas. She died the May and I graduated in the July.

quite frankly, if anyone does not like it they can get in the sea.

I also have tattoos of the dates of my children’s birth and I include my stillbirth baby in that. Does that bother you too? If not, why not?

Quite honestly it’s fuck all to do with anyone else.

I haven't done it, but all the people I know who have done it have had children die and want a photo with all their children together.

If you really think a bereaved parent is weird for wanting that then I'm even more in despair of humanity than I currently am.

I feel like that’s different as the experience still actually happened. They may have been dead but they were there.

comfort in fake memories is weird

To me a photograph is a snapshot of a memory and actual moment in time. Superimposing someone that wasn’t there makes the photo not real and not even a memory.

It's weird but ultimately harmless.

But then I feel the same about roadside shrines.

It’s been being done pretty much since the invention of photography. Along with the photos of dead children propped up to look as if they’re alive but sleeping, or sometimes with eyes painted on their closed eyelids to make them look alive. The internet is full of them.

Think of how infrequent photographs were then. Often there would have been no living photo of the dead person.

That is weird and creepy.

Do it if it brings comfort. That doesn't mean we have to pretend it isn't weird.

Lots of things are weird without harming anyone. That doesn't mean they aren't weird.

It sounds bizarre, but in line with the current trend to deal with unpleasant realities by denying them.