For some facebook is a continual Open Casket, a way to communicate with the dead long after they are gone. This has special appeal for the generation that grew up on My Space and continues their life on Facebook.
A Facebook Profile can be a perpetual memorial.
...a search ofFacebook groups titled In Memory of
turned up more than 55,000 results, and a search for
Rest in Peace turned up more than 14,000.
Facebook is a great place for online memorials
For the generation that spent high school on MySpace andcollege on Facebook, its only natural to seek out the Web in times of need.
When Northwestern freshman Trevor Boehm died in November 2008, friends and family members flocked to a common gathering spot to mourn together and share their disbelief: Facebook. It was all many of them could do, since his three older sisters were back home in Monument, Colo., and high school friends were away at colleges all over the United States. Initially reported missing by his parents when they arrived for Parents’ Weekend and couldn’t locate him, 20-year-old Boehm’s body was found several days later in Lake Michigan near Chicago’s Montrose harbor. News of a candlelight vigil and two funerals, one at Northwestern and one at home, were spread through the “Rest in Peace Trevor Jon Boehm” memorial group on Facebook.
Many friends posted photos in the group or wrote messages on his personal page, expressing their grief and saying how much they would miss him. But more than a year after his death, Trevor Boehm’s Facebook friends are still writing to him, updating him on Nip/Tuck episodes he’s missed and Thai dinners he couldn’t attend. “Writing on his Facebook gives me a way to communicate with him because I feel like somehow he knows what’s being written,” says Ali Boehm, his older sister. “I go on there whenever I have a memory or thought of him. It’s a good outlet for just proactively communicating with him.”
A Facebook Profile can be a perpetual “OPEN CASKET”
As Facebook and other social networking Web sites become more important to human interaction, these technologies are changing the way people cope with loss. In a world where our digital lives are as real those offline, a person’s Facebook profile postmortem is a virtual open casket. -via www.dailynorthwestern.com
For those who choose to ignore the Facebook Memoralization Option, and do not close the deceased’s account FACEBOOK BECOMES AN ALMOST PERPETUAL MEMORIAL.
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