Three days ago, a grieving father put out a request on Reddit:

My daughter recently passed away after a long battle in the children’s hospital. Since she was in the hospital her whole life we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes. Can someone remove the tubes from this photo?

The Reddit community answered with the images you see above. Cari Romm is moved:

[S]ocial media-driven responses to death can range from uncomfortable—is hitting “Like” on a Facebook death announcement supportive or crassly insensitive?—to the downright cringe-worthy, like the Tumblr “Selfies at Funerals.” But every so often, the world wide web offers up  to the bereaved some small piece of atonement for its missteps. …

Selfishly, it’s comforting for the rest of us, too. The longer we exist on social media, the more loss we’ll all eventually live out through our computer screens. Let’s hope that this, rather than funeral selfies, becomes the future norm for public grief.