Grief Goes Online

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These looser standards have caused problems on some online memorial sites. The website Legacy.com has hired a squadron of 'screeners' to vet messages sent to memorials on the site. The messages range from petty insults to full-blown accusations of incest and other crimes, reports the New York Times (Nov. 5, 2006). Most common are the memorial messages from secret lovers.

Still, in the openness of online grieving, Robert A. Neimeyer sees the seeds of a healthy process. Neimeyer is the director of psychotherapy research in the psychology department at the University of Memphis and editor of Death Studies, an international academic journal that concerns itself with death, dying, and bereavement.

'Many people feel that it is existentially and socially useful to gather in a setting in which we confront our collective vulnerability,' he says. Memorial websites and online bereavement support groups may provide that setting, he maintains. 'But whether you achieve a real sense of community is an open question,' he adds. 'Are mediated relationships satisfying surrogates for face-to-face relationships, in which you literally can be held in someone's arms?'

That's a question that has a wider significance than how we grieve our dead. It may be true that in our relatively isolated and repressed existences, online communication fosters a more open expression of emotion. But until someone comes up with a working coffin webcam, online grieving is still several keystrokes removed from the ghastly truth of our own mortality.

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