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Namira groaned and dropped her phone. “Well, now we really look dramatic.”
I stared at the ceiling of the motel room. The situation had shifted entirely. We had acted quickly based on suspicion, and now we had the facts. “So… do we take the review down?”
There was a long silence. It’s hard to admit when you’ve overreacted, but our actions now seemed excessive. While the principle of privacy was still valid, the context was one of grief, not malicious intent. The original, angry review remained online. One part of my mind still argued that we had done the right thing, but another part worried about the consequences of the review.
The Cost of the Review
Two days later, we received a new message, this time from Marten’s sister, Ritha. It was short and painful to read.
“I hope you feel good about driving away the only memories he had left,” it read.
That message stung deeply. I tried to tell myself I didn’t owe her anything, but the idea that our review was causing more than just a loss of bookings—that it was adding to someone’s pain—kept nagging at me.
After three days of thinking, I reached out to Marten directly to apologize.
“I’m sorry,” I wrote. “I jumped to conclusions. I didn’t realize the full situation.”
His reply came back within minutes.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Honestly, I probably would’ve done the same. I just… I haven’t been back to that house since she passed. My sister put it back on Airbnb because we’re trying to figure out what to do with it. I didn’t even know someone had booked it until the camera sent me an alert.”
Then he added a line that truly hit home: “I haven’t unscrewed that smoke detector since the night she died.”
He explained his reason for leaving it there: “I kept it there,” he went on, “because it was the last thing that made me feel like she was still around. I’d check it every few days, even though no one was there. Like a dumb ritual.”
He didn’t make excuses or ask us to delete the review; he simply told the honest, difficult truth about his grief.
Changing the Narrative
His honesty convinced me to call Airbnb again. I asked if I could edit the post instead of removing it completely. They agreed.
I rewrote the entire review. I explained the misunderstanding, confirmed the facts about the camera, and asked readers not to judge the host too harshly. I added a note about grief—how it can make people do very odd, sentimental things. I suggested we should be curious, not just furious.
The response from the online community was supportive. People began sharing their own stories of loss and the strange ways they cope. One person talked about finding an old voicemail from their late husband that they couldn’t bring themselves to delete. Another said he still paid for his dad’s Netflix account just to see the “Are you still watching?” popup.
It became clear that grief makes us all act strangely, but it also shows our shared humanity.
CONTINUE READING ON THE NEXT PAGE 🥰
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