“…Just looking at this page makes me remember so many loved ones. Many taken far too soon” a member posted on the Facebook group wall on April 4, at 9:49 p.m., probably still in grief for the beloved ones who passed to the other side. “This is a great way for us to share the thoughts and memories, or even just to take a moment and smile as we remember.”

Facebook, as it defines itself, helps us connect and share with the people in our life. Since its first launch in February 2004, many people’s lives in the world were reshaped and re-organized by the new social-network growing at a tremendous speed. Currently, more than 250 million people use this tool to celebrate birthdays, to create events and gatherings, to chat with their friends, to flirt or quarrel with their lovers, to peep lives of people they know and they do not know and so on. It seems like Facebook helps more than a quarter billion people to connect their lives with others, even if, sometimes, the other person may already be dead.

The Facebook Cemetery is a group dedicated to honor the memory and to mourn the loss of loved ones who have passed on. Founded on April this year, it serves as a Facebook platform for its current 466 members to send their memorials, share their grief and find support through a network of people.

“I’ve lost a few friends and family members over the years and I figured that I could create a place for anybody to visit their lost loved ones at any time, no matter how far away they are” replies Mitch Desormeaux, the founder of the Facebook Cemetery Group from a message box.

“We also have an administrator in the group who is a Funeral home director” continues Desormeaux. “He is readily available to everyone if they should have any questions regarding the funeral process. His professional approach and his compassion for the people were key factors to let him onto the Facebook Cemetery group management.”

However, the Facebook Cemetery is not the only group dedicated to share grief with others. A significant number of memorial groups, including infant losses and cancer cases, started flourishing lately. Not to mention hundreds of active Facebook accounts of diseased people, which are deliberately kept by their relatives to immortalize them.

As a matter of fact, there is a new change in Facebook policy towards death, a phenomenon which is becoming an increasing problem. According to a recent article published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Facebook is to introduce a feature allowing members’ profiles to be “memorialized” when they die, after complaints that users were being urged to get in touch with dead friends. After the memorial profiles will be implemented, they will only be visible to the dead user’s confirmed friends.

Will the new Facebook policy end current controversies? Hard to tell.

“Per our policy for deceased users, we have memorialized this person’s account. This removes certain more sensitive information and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or find the person in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.”

Such was the reply Stephanie Bemister received from Facebook, when she requested her brother William Bemister’s Facebook page to be removed after having lost him tragically. Besides the fact that becoming “officially deceased” on Facebook obliges an obituary or news article, there is also a debate on several blogs about how the lack of authenticity on Facebook memorial groups may lead to many misunderstandings or various types of fake-death pranks, probably trying to make us recall that lighting candles right by our beloved one’s grave is still not a bad option.

BOX:

Interview with Jocelyn M. DeGroot, Ph.D

DeGroot is Assistant Professor in Department of Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her area of research is computer-medical communication, interpersonal communication, and communicative issues of death and dying. In the study entitled “Reconnecting with the Dead via Facebook: Examining Transcorporeal Communication as a Way to Maintain Relationships”, DeGroot examines the grief-related communication on Facebook memorial group walls.

– Why do people need to form Facebook memorial groups?

Because this generation spends so much time on Facebook anyway, it’s natural to want to continue using the same technology to grieve the loss of a friend. Facebook provides a space where, at any time of day, people from all areas of the world can visit and grieve. Some people choose not to form Facebook groups to memorialize their friend. Some continue to post on their friend’s profile instead. Very recently, Facebook has stated that they will turn people’s profiles into memorial profiles if you send in the obituary. This keeps the deceased person from showing up as someone to “reconnect with” or as a suggested friend. (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=163091042130)

– You mention of “transcorporal communication” in your study. What do you mean by that? [to the editor: transcorporal is the right term]

I examined Facebook memorial group wall posts and focused on the people who were writing to the deceased as if the deceased was still alive. This functioned to both make sense of the death and maintain bonds with the deceased. Talking to the deceased friend is one way to help the living make sense the death and still maintain a sense of normalcy. If you look at some of the postings from people to their deceased friends, they talk about everyday events – who went to prom with whom, engagements, parties, etc. I termed this kind of communication “Transcorporeal Communication.” “Trans” indicates that the communication occurs in a different state, and “corporeal” indicates a relationship to a physical material body. Deceased people no longer maintain a physical presence, thus, the messages are directed at someone who is in a different state of being physically present.

– Some think that Facebook was the milestone that people stopped needing “nicknames” to appear on web and started becoming “themselves”. Do you agree with this? If yes, how can you interpret “cemetery groups” within this perspective?

People are definitely not “themselves” online. We present ourselves online as we would like to be perceived. We do this in face-to-face (FtF) encounters as well, but it is easier to control online. We put up pictures (or do not put them up) and post interests/hobbies/favorites that portray us as we would like to be perceived.

Some characteristics of computer-mediated communication do benefit online grieving. It is often difficult to discuss emotional events in FtF situations, and it is easier online. When communicating online, people are less self-conscious and less likely to be inhibited by standard social constraints. Mediated communication also provides some degree of anonymity, and the mediated nature of communicating online results in lower interpersonal risks that often accompany FtF communication. Essentially, people feel “safer” disclosing their personal feelings about the death online than they would do FtF.

– Do you think the Facebook memorial groups make feel better?

I think that Facebook memorial groups (and other online memorials) help get people talking about death. Death is such a taboo topic, yet it is something that affects everybody at some time. As such, it is important that we begin to talk about it more openly.