It's only the middle of May and I have already lost 3 facebook friends through death. Do you delete them or leave them on your facebook?

My father died a couple of months back. Mine was the last comment on his page. I know I’m not removing him from my friends list, although I may ask Facebook to remove the page when I’m ready.

My condolences @chyna and @the100thmonkey. I’d leave them in my friends list.

@chyna & @the100thmonkey My condolences as well. Personally, I would keep them on my friends list as memories. You might ask Facebook support if they have some special category for dealing with records of lost loved ones who you wish to remember, but whose deaths you don’t care to be constantly reminded of. If they haven’t developed a solution to this yet, they should.

Sorry about your losses and I see deleting them from Facebook as the same as throwing away all your pictures of them.

I lost 2 friends of mine at the end of last year both young men, I keep them. If you are feeling reminiscent about your time with them you can easily go and see photos and good times you had together. Facebook profiles can be memorialised so that people do no receive notifications telling you to get in contact with old friends and so that the timeline feature does not kick in to show no activity. If you are close to the families and they do not know about this maybe report the page to be memorialised or ask a family member to do this so that people do no receive notifications.
Sorry about your losses, I know how hard it is to loose friends. It really sticks with you.

I’m so sorry for your losses. That seems like an inordinate number of friends to lose. I personally would delete them because at first it would be too painful for me to see their faces.

I also had two 21-year old good friends passing away in 3 months. One of the profiles were removed a few days later by their relative. It still gives me shivers every time I go see the other one.

I too am sorry for your losses @chyna. That is very sad. I don’t think there is a rule here. Do what feels right for you. Leave them there if it hurts to remove them. If a time comes when removing them is the right thing to do, you can do it then.

Quite the conundrum. As @bongo has stated, by not deleting their profiles, you can easily look back at their pictures, friends list, and wall should you ever get the urge.

Unless their family members requests facebook to remove their profiles, I see no reason to delete them, even if they hadn’t been very close to you.