Now we have what feels like a more personal way of connecting to the deceased that exists outside the physical realm and that's immediately accessible.
Today people who have died are kept alive in a way I think Mark Zuckerberg could not have anticipated, via their Facebook pages.
When one of my friends died a couple years ago her friends and family immediately started posting photos, memories, and little notes on her Facebook page. At the time I found it sort of heart breaking because she could no longer respond. Now I understand the true healing power this way of responding can have.
Today we can connect to those we've lost in a way that seems, at least psychologically, more tangible. That connection becomes tangible when those Facebook pages become a place where at random those who are connected by their love of, or acquaintance to, the deceased can talk about their memories of that person, or just how they're feeling. Networks develop around these pages as we help one another cope, mourn and celebrate the deceased.
Pages are maintained by family members as forums, as living memorials. When I think about my friends, my cousin, or my friends' siblings who've died I often visit their pages. I'm always surprised to see how often others do the same. I usually end up reading posts and looking at photos, and in some way feeling closer to that person and feeling healed.
There is something comforting about going to a page I know that person created, wrote on, and communicated from. It is like visiting the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. and standing on the steps where Martin Luther King, Jr. galvanized a nation towards reform. It is like visiting any place that has become sacred.
Yet, unlike other memorials, these memorials aren't to presidents, politicians, or anyone in the public sphere, and so they are particularly interesting, and personal.
The internet feels like a very permanent medium to memorialize someone. It will be interesting to see how these living memorials fair time. Perhaps because they are so immediately accessible they will not suffer the neglect of the desecrated, decaying and forgotten gravestones around the world.
In a way when I visit these pages I feel closer to that person than I would just visiting their grave.
I wonder what future generations will do with these pages, these posts. Will they better remember, and understand how those history usually passes over, the youth who used Facebook when they were just beginning to define themselves, and the unknown environmentalist, affected others and in turn effected this world?
I would hope so.
For sometimes it is only in death that we truly understand the effects those we've lost have had on this world.
And they, are worth remembering.
