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Death and grief on-line: Virtual memorialization and changing concepts of childhood death and parental

bereavement on the Internet

LISA M MITCHELL, PETER H STEPHENSON*, SUSAN CADELL"^ AND MARY ELLEN MACDONALD'

Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada; *School of Environmental Studies and Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada; ^School of Social Work, Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; 'Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

A B S T R A C T : 'Virtual memorials' intended to memorialize the lives of children imply significant shifts in the conceptualiza-

tion of death, particularly for grieving parents. Created by parents in memory of their deceased children, on-line memorials

constructed using templates reflect strong cultural beließ about the nature of childhood deaths, grief and the development of a

kind of distal afterlife. Yirtual memorials create a new social value for the deceased and shift death and bereavement from

private into more public experiences. Building upon this work, we describe a kind of 'on-line immortality' created through

virtual memorials where the virtiud presence of the deceased in text and images, and practices intended to sustain a relation-

ship with the deceased can extend bereavement and the social lives of the dead indefinitely. While such memorials can offer

solace, they also potentiate business opportunities for those hoping to create lasting customers. As such, they may also extend

mourning indefinitely. This may be especiaUy true for certain kinds of deeply problematic deaths, such as those of children.

KEYWORDS: virtual, online, memorials, grief, children, parents

Though many people sit night after night intheir living rooms watching various kinds of 'death' and irmumerable dead bodies as a form of entertainment (e.g., CSI, Bones), the death of loved ones and the grief which follows are still mosdy sequestered from everyday life in eco- nomically and technologically advantaged coun- tries, including Canada. Grief and bereavement are confmed to specific times and places, and are mainly private, or secluded experiences. Most deaths take place in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices, and are managed by health care profes- sionals who also inform the bereaved of what is 'normal' and what is 'pathological' in the grief process, and offer ways to 'resolve' grief and to grieve properly. Anthropological research has long established that the dead in many cultural contexts have social lives (Baydala, Hampton, Rinunwa, Kinunwa, & Kinunwa, 2006; Counts & Counts, 2004; Hattori, McCubbin, & Ishida, 2006; Keesing, 1982; Rodman & Rodman, 1983). But, until recendy the dominant approach in Canadian bereavement care has been that survivors should view death as fmal and they should 'work' to sever attachment with the dead. Funerals, it is claimed, provide 'closure', enabling

friends and family members to 'get over' or 'move beyond' their grief and 'get on' with life. Openly maintaining a relationship with the dead is widely discouraged, and may even be pathol- ogized as a sign of 'faüed' or 'unresolved' grief if it persists. However, this 'remnant taboo ... in relation to bereavement and the permissibil- ity of its expression' (Gibson, 2007, p. 417) can become unfettered on the Web, whereas Walter, Hourizi, Moncur, and Pitsillides (2011, p. 285) point out, 'Pictures of the dead, convenations with the dead, and mourners' feelings can and do become part of the everyday on-line world'.

Within this broad pattern, parental grief and bereavement are distinctive in ways that may predispose parents to rely on the Internet as a resource in the expression of grief, in part because it has the potential to connect isolated individuals with one another. In this article, we will explore some of the ways in which the on- Hne expression of parental grief may both reUeve social isolation, and possibly perpetuate it. The social invisibility, sequestering and stigmatiz- ing of parental grief is especially common since the death of a child is widely regarded by many North Americans, Europeans and Australians

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(among others) as an unspeakable contravention of the 'natural' order of things, particularly in 'modem' society. The pervasive cultural nar- rative su^ests that 'children should bury their parents', that parents pass on inhetitance 'down' to their children and live on through their chil- dren. Hence, 'When a child dies, it is always out of season ... dreams die and we are all dimin- ished by the loss of human potential. Although dying is a part of life, a child's death, in a very real sense, is unnatural ...' (Behrman, 2003, p. xv). The death of child may profoundly disrupt deeply held ontological assumptions and nar- ratives about time, the future, nature, and may threaten parental identity (Buckle & Fleming, 2011; Stephenson, 2002a, 2002b). Indeed, there are English-language terms such as 'widow', 'widower' and 'orphan' to mark those changes in social status, but there is no special kin-term for parents whose children have died. The term 'civilians' is employed by some bereaved parents to identify those who have not shared their experience (Hastings, 2000); unlike civil- ians, bereaved parents, like soldiers, have expe- rienced an unspeakable trauma and horror. As Macdonald, Mitchell, Stephenson, and Cadell (2009) write:

Bereaved parents invoke feelings of discomfort in the non-bereaved: There is a danger in their liminal status, a reminder of mortality and a sense of 'there but for the grace of god go I'. Fear of contagion, bad luck, and pollution furthers their exclusion. (Macdonald et al., 2009, p. 6)

Evidence from North America and the UK indicates that the death of a child is one of the most disruptive and profound types of loss, with deep, intense and often prolonged grief. This is highly variable in cultural terms. Cultural groups such as the Hutterites, for example, do not experience the deaths of children to be as fundamentally threatening as the majority cul- ture does (Burgess, Stephenson, Ratanakul, & Suwannakaote, 1998; Stephenson, 1983- 1984) and global patterns of early childhood death in areas of great poverty and epidemic disease demonstrate a weary acceptance of the inevitabilities of high child mortality

(Einarsdóttir, 2004; Scheper-Hughes, 1993). In economically and technological advan- taged societies, bereavement after children die is often prolonged and may become 'compli- cated' (to use the psychologized/medicalized term) by a cultural narrative which idealizes relatively brief and painless death fî om 'natural causes' at the end of a long life (Stephenson, 1983—1984). Deaths of young children are rela- tively rare in affluent countries, so shared expe- rience of this among one's relatives and friends is limited, and bereaved parents frequently report feeling very isolated (Riches & Dawson, 1996). Gender differences in bereavement and in particular, the experiences of fathers are not well researched (Musambira, Hasting, & Hoover, 2007, p. 272). However, there is some evidence that mothers have significantly higher scores on measures of despair, anger/hostility, guilt, loss of control, rumination, depersonali- zation, somatization and various physical symp- toms, than do fathers. Both mothers and fathers experience feelings of social isolation (Schwab, 1996). Dispersed kinship networks, geographic mobility and the absence of an enduring sense of community in the lives of many urban North Americans may exacerbate this sense of isola- tion. Bereaved parents generally experience more intense and more frequent depression, especially loss of appetite and sleep disturbance than other bereaved individuals (Blank, 1998). If a deceased child was their only child, parental identity is also lost and grieved.

While the death of any child can result in intense and long-lasting grief, there are addi- tional complexities when adult children die. Others may assume that parental anguish is less intense than for young children, reason- ing that at least the adult child 'had a life'. Consequently, parents of adult children often fmd their grief 'discounted' (Doka, 2002). Similarly, women and their partners who do not have living children but have experienced miscarriage or stillbirth may find themselves socially excluded from the category of 'parent' (Layne, 2002). Comments like, 'don't worry, you can always have another one' or 'at least you didn't get attached' which are especially

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commonplace comments made to people after perinatal loss, may be well intentioned, but they 'discount' the emotional experience of the bereaved parent. Discounted grief is also associated with deaths due to causes that make others uncomfortable or judgmental, includ- ing drunk driving, violence, and suicide — each of which is a common causes of death among adolescents. These kinds of deaths often induce in parents strong guut feelings associated with failing to recognize the seriousness of their problems.

Not only may bereaved parents be socially isolated, stigmatized, and no longer regarded as 'parents', there is growing recognition among bereavement specialists that parental grief consti- tutes a 'devastating, ever-present grief (Buckle & Fleming, 2011, p. 1) that is especially resis- tant to intervention and is essentially permanent (Klass, 1988). From a recent volume entitled Parenting afier the Death of a Child: A Practitioner's Guide:

Bereaved parenting, then, is an act of engaging in regeneration, but it is not an act of 'acceptance', 'res- olution', 'moving on' or 'getting over' the death of a beloved child. It is an act of 'picking up the pieces' in the face of the devastation, forever respectñil and informed by the weight of their child's absence. (Buckle & Fleming, 2011, p. xvii)

V I R T U A L MEMORIALS

In this complex social and cultural context in which chud death and parental grief are seen to be socially disruptive and even taboo and at the same time acknowledged as permanent and resis- tant to traditional bereavement interventions, we undertook a study of virtual memorials created by parents to memorialize their deceased child. What is a virtual or on-line memorial? They are found on the Internet in a number of forms: O n social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, in sHdeshows of the deceased set to music and uploaded onto YouTube, and on specialized memorial hosting websites created by charities, flxneral homes, bereaved individu- als, associations connected with specific illnesses, and notably in profit-based Internet sites which provide web-space at a cost to the bereaved

individual'. In addition to virtual memorials for individual adults and children, there are sites commemorating celebrities, saints, and for mass deaths (e.g., victims of natural disasters in Japan, Haiti, New Orleans) and many for pets (Gibson, 2007). Early on-line memorials, appearing in the mid-1990s (CarroU & Landry, 2010), were mostly text with no or limited graphics, but with the advent of Web 2.0, they have grown in complexity, visual appeal, animation and ease of production by individuals without knowledge of web design. As we discuss in more detail in this article, specialized memorial hosting sites now provide easy to use menu-based instructions for memorial construction, and offer a range of design templates, including some for deceased infants and children. From one site:

... our memorial websites offer families and friends the opportunity to stay close to those they have lost ... Tell their story with an in-depth biography; recall their favorite movies and foods with a fevorites sec- tion; even post video and audio for a unique opportu- nity for yourself and site visitors to really connect with the deceased loved one. Newspaper obituaries hardly offer more than a quick factual news brief. Memorial websites are the obituaries of the future, offering real insight into who your loved one was and what their life was like. From beautiflil pictures to descriptive text to touching audio, the content found on our vir- tual memorials provides family members and friends the chance to say goodbye, as well as pay tribute. (Beconrad, 2008)

In both promotional material and some research on web memorials, much has been made of on-line commemoration and bereave- ment as 'new' and distinctive social practices. UnHke most physical monuments, virtual memorials can be continually modified by family and fiiends, as well as by individuals out- side the deceased's social network (Hess, 2007;

Memorializing the dead takes many forms on the Web; to clarify, by 'virtual memorials' we are not referring to the virtual graves and memorials that can be created in virtual life (VL) platforms such as Second Life. Nor are we referring to the various on-line options to notify your virtual friends of your actual demise or disperse your virtual assets. The virtual memorials we study are very much like personal web pages.

Lisa M Mitchell et al.

Roberts, 2004). Memorial web pages are 'de- territorialized' (Hess, 2007) and thus do not constrain bereavement into one ritual place and time, like funerals on a specific day or a grave at a specific geographical location. This transcen- dence 'provides grievers with relative anonymity and privacy, dignity, neutrality, [and] constant availability' (Williams & Merton, 2009, p. 71), enabling family and friends of the deceased to grieve whenever and however they wish. At the same time, virtual memorials shift death and bereavement from the private sphere of fam- ily and local community into the public largely unregulated spaces of the Internet (deVries & Rutherford, 2004, p. 23; Geser, 1998; Gibson, 2007; Walteretal., 2011).

Through asynchronous public access, the on- line memorials are said to enable new forms of support for bereaved individuals, providing a sense of community, 'a unique form of commu- nal discourse' (Carroll & Landry, 2010, p. 342) and offering solace to individuals (Hess, 2007; Roberts, 2004). Moreover, some virtual memo- rials promote their services as therapeutic and as *an important step in the healing process' (Paver of Memories, n.d.). Some of the larger memo- rial hosting companies even offer a range of bereavement services, including 'grief counsel- lors, advice, community forums, and real-world projects and initiatives' (MemoryOf, 2009a).

A fundamental question here concerns the way(s) in which the conceptualization and meanings of death associated with bereavement may be changing in the context of virtual memo- rials. This is more than simply a question about changing attitudes towards death in specific communities. Culturally variable, age-related and gendered attitudes about specific ideas (e.g., communicating life-threatening diagnoses, ideas of an afterlife, attitudes towards euthanasia, organ transplantation) have been well documented throughout a wide literature in medicine and the social sciences (Gibson, 2007; Lock, 2001; Timmermans, 2005). The question concerning conceptualization goes to the heart of how death is constructed on an ongoing and relational basis with surviving parents, as weU as siblings and friends, and the possibilities for a transformation

ofthat understanding. We are primarily interested in memorialization here as part of the dialectic of life and death, not other media conventions sur- rounding death: Its use as a narrative force 'to inform, shock entertain' (Gibson, 2007, p. 416). For example, Ortner (1997) has described in detail how Sherpa and the international moun- taineering community's construction of death contrasts between notions of managed risk and fmancial reward for the former, and life affirming existential experiences of risk for the latter - each of which on the surface mutually produces the other through the shared experience of climb- ing. Importantly, these are more than attitudes; they are culturally constituted relational mean- ings, which are reproduced on an ongoing and repeated basis through both participation and resistance by both parties (Ortner, 1997).

Of particular interest to us is the idea that vir- tual memorials blur the boundaries between the living and the dead, enabling relationships to con- tinue after death (Davies, 2004; Klass, Silverman, & Nicbnan, 1996; Roberts, 2004). deVries and Rutherford (2004) note that while 'death ends a life — it does not necessarily end a relationship* (p. 6) and the idea of a 'continuous bond* between the living and the dead underlies much of the cur- rent marketing and appeal of virtual memorials. Of course, relationships between the dead and the living are not dependent upon technology, on- line or otherwise. Yet, it is clear that the Web and virtual memorials may shape those relationships in distinctive ways. Indeed, individuals often post comments directly to the deceased and several studies have found that grieving family and friends list 'communicating with the dead* as a a key rea- son to visit virtual memorials (Roberts, 2004, p. 62; Walter et al., 2011; Williams & Merton, 2009, p. 82). By implication, publicly available details of the lives of the deceased may persist in the Internet indefinitely. The estates of some dead celebrities are a case in point: Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson's performances and their on- line cult penonalities generate far more income now than they ever did when they were alive. Deceased individuals achieve an on-line immor- tality, visible and accessible globally, and 'these surviving digital selves are managed in important

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ways by otbers' (Carroll & Landry, 2010, p. 348). Tbese continuing bonds and immortality medi- ated tbrougb tbe tecbnology and spaces of tbe Internet and tbe practices wbicb tbey are enabling suggest cbanging ideas about 'proper' relations with tbe dead and the 'proper' place, time, and visibility of grief Numerous studies bave com- mented on novel and changing bereavement practices enabled tbrougb on-line activities (see Walter et al., 2011, for a recent review). Our aim in tbis paper is to foreground tbe tecbnologjcal mediation of parental bereavement, bigblighting ways in wbicb meanings and social relationships are being actively constituted tbrougb Internet tecbnology.

In particular, we bring an analysis of tbe tecb- nology of virtual memorials into conversation witb cultural narratives about deceased cbildren and bereaved parents in order to consider bow tbese memorials enable or constrain afibrdances, or 'possibilities for action' (Hutcbby, 2001). By attending to tbe tecbno-social aspects of vir- tual memorials, we consider wbat it means for deceased cbildren to have a sort of 'on-line immortality' in which parents can not only 'cre- ate' and 'grow' tbeir child in images and text, but also maintain a relationship with that child, communicate witb tbe child, encourage oth- ers to do the same, and even establish connec- tions between deceased children. W e suggest tbat tbese tecbnologicaUy mediated practices may be one of tbe ways tbrougb wbich parents continue to constitute themselves as respon- sible, loving parents to tbeir deceased children. W e consider why tbe technologically mediated 'bonds' enabled tbrough virtual memorials are increasingly regarded as a legitimate and healthy means of maintaining an 'on-going' presence of and relationship with the deceased. We argue that the experience of Internet-based grieving bas tbe potential to botb mitigate feelings of iso- lation, but also to prolong tbem.

M E T H O D

The research on which our analysis is based was undertaken as part of a larger interdisciplinary project on parental bereavement that asks several open-ended questions: What are the experiences

of bereaved parents in Canada? How do these experiences align with or differ from the ways in which the impact of the death of a child is understood and represented in Canadian social policy (e.g., bereavement leave), popvdar culture (sucb as film, news), and especially in profes- sional bereavement care. 'Cbild' is deñned here relationally, and so can be a penon wbo died at any age (as an adult, as an adolescent, a cbild, an infant, or even pre-natally). In tbis paper we confine our discussion to EngÜsb-language memorial sites in remembrance of individuals who Uved in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, most of whom died between the ages of 5-18. Memorials for prenatal loss, stillbirth, and very young infants wiU be tbe sub- jects of a separate paper.

In order to get a sense of the diversity of formats, we searched for 'on-Une' and 'virtual' memorials using botb broad searcb engines sucb as Google and specifically for 'cbild' and 'teen' memorials within specific memorial sites and in social networking sites including: YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. Internal site searches following 'related pages' suggested by tbe site and using terms sucb as 'cbild deatb', 'pregnancy loss' and 'parental bereavement' led us to otber memorials. In total we viewed over 100 virtual memorials, beginning witb tbe home page on each, clicking on tabs to see any additional pages, and reading through texts and posts; in other words, 'experiencing them the way a visitor' might (Finlay & Krueger, 2011). W e also dis- covered that comments posted to virtual memo- rials by individuals unknown to tbe deceased's family not infrequently contained links to other on-line memorials. (We have not looked in detail at sites advertising themselves as explic- itly Christian nor at memorials to murdered or disappeared children which are both worthy of separate and focused analyses.)

The focus in this paper is on easy to use template-based memorials on specialized memo- rial bosting sites ratber tban memorials on social networking sites or tbe shdesbow and video memorials posted on YouTube. Our focus on template-based memorials certainly excludes novel or unconventional forms of memorials

Lisa M Mitchell et al.

such as those built 'from scratch' (Finlay & Krueger, 2011) and offer users a more limited opportunity to resistant normative representa- tions of death and bereavement. Nonetheless, template-based memorials enable us to focus on the technological options available to a wider range of Internet users, including those viath little or no experience in web design. Private or members-only web memorials do exist, but all of the data for this study was available in the public domain of the Web without subscription or membership. The memorial site quotations are verbatim without correcting for punctua- tion, spelling, and sentence structure. Names of individuals, dates and places have been changed or deleted.

While we have interviewed bereaved parents, these interviews have not, to date, focused specifically on the creation of virtual memorials. Nor, due to ethical concerns, did we attempt to contact any of the parents who created the memorials we have viewed as the basis of this paper.

THEORIZING VIRTUAL MEMORIALS:

REPRESENTATIONS AND AFFORDANCES

We theorize virtual memorials as instances of socially and technologically mediated practice or 'modes of engagement' (Wu Song, 2010) by which parents may represent and interact with their deceased child. With this framing and as we articulate throughout the paper, our concern is to examine how the Web 2.0 based technol- ogy of virtual memorials is not simply a passive tool for merely depicting the deceased but seems to offer some parents a means of continuing the social relationship to their child, indeed, in some sense, of maintaining and enlivening that child. Central to our analyses of socially and technolog- ically mediated parenting of deceased children are the terms 'representation' and *affordance'.

'Representation' as we use the term does not connote only the sense of a copy or facsimile of an entity. Rather, in our analysis, a repre- sentation simultaneously depicts something and constitutes it (Hall, 1997) and it is in that dual process of showing and making that what is rep- resented is novel, somehow different from its

original referent. Representation in this sense does not privilege a reflection of an underly- ing or previous material or interpretive reality, nor does it depict something entirely without a past, without reference to and constraint by existing ideas, relationships, practices and enti- ties. We suggest that Web 2.0 virtual memori- als enable representations of deceased children who have clear resemblances to the child who lived but who are, nonetheless, novel iterations ofthat child. Similarly, as the child continues in some new form and sense, so too does parent- ing. Further, we s u r e s t that the affordances of Web 2.0 are central to this process of creating persons and relationships in novel forms.

Affordances are described by Hutchby (2001, p. 441) as 'possibilities for action' and by Rappert as 'the perceived properties of an object [includ- ing technology] that suggest (but do not deter- mine) how it might be used' (Behrman, 2003, p. 566 cited in Graves, 2007, pp. 335-336). Affordances have been extensively theorized since first introduced by psychologist Gibson (1977) and we note here that we are using this concept in a limited way, framed by Gibson's interactionist view of perception and action. Gibson focused on environmentally available information and examined situated interactions where agents are constrained. His contextu- alized approach has been widely taken up by ecological psychology, interpersonal communi- cation studies and research on complex, socially organized activity such as the Internet (Greeno, 1994). Of particular interest here are three char- acteristics of affordances as outlined by arche- ologist Knappett (2004). First, affordances are relational in that they are neither independent attributes of the technology nor are they uncon- strained interpretations of that technology. Rather, affordances are 'a relational property, shared between object and agent' and emerging through the dynamic engagement of technolog- ical limits and user perceptions (Knappet, 2004, p. 46). Second, the transparency of affordances, that is, the uses suggested by a given technol- ogy are not pre-determined but fluctuate 'in different situations involving different agents' (Knappett, 2004, p. 46). A final characteristic of

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affordances is their sodality — what the technol- ogy may suggest as possibilities for action 'may be negotiated and contested' depending upon those situations and agents (Knappett, 2004, p. 47). In sum, affordances highlight the dynamic, diverse relational aspect of technological prac- tice, enabling us to consider not only how tech- nology is used in particular ways by bereaved parents, but how that technology enables and constrains their bereavement practices.

The general affordances of web pages since Web 2.0 include user-generated content, the capacity for audio and graphics, highly interac- tive communication modes (social networking sites, blogging, wikis), and user-fiiendly tem- plates for building web sites (Wu Song, 2010). As we noted above, although there are several kinds of virtual memorials, our analysis here focuses on those created through the use of Web 2.0 templates. Templates are pre-designed websites which individuals without expert knowledge of software or of coding language can personalize by following a relatively simple series of steps to upload their own content in photos, text, video, and audio. In effect, templates are sites through which the affordances of virtual memo- rials are created and enacted. Templates are also the means by which bereaved parents create a place and a presence for their deceased child and for themselves on the Web. They offer oppor- tunities, which can be understood in terms of affordances.

What possibilities do these affordances cre- ate in virtual memorials? The templates we have encountered on various hosting sites are designed for creating memorials for individu- als, not for groups, historical events, or mass disasters. In fact, two templates are often avail- able for different kinds of grief: O n more than one hosting site, tabs for 'Create a Memorial for a Person' and 'Create a Memorial for a Pet' appear side by side, seemingly accorded similar social weight. While templates make the cre- ation of virtual memorials relatively easy, they also require parents to decide which of the standardized options within the template best describes or represents their child. Selecting the background wallpaper, font style and size.

and colors or theme that will set the visual and esthetic tone of the page begins the process of constructing a web page for a deceased child. One site describes this personalizing affor- dance as an opportunity to, 'choose a theme that reflects your loved one's personality and add background music' (MemoryOf, 2009b). A parent can choose, for example, to represent their child with the pre-set themes of angels on a sky blue background or electric guitars against a brick wall. In addition to background waU- paper, theme and color, templates also have multiple pre-set categories: 'hfe timeHne', 'visi- tor guestbook', 'flowers', 'candles'; 'music and graphics' (etc.), some of which are discussed in more detau below in our analysis. Readily available examples are often provided to the prospective cUent on the sites, which nearly always have 'featured memorials', often appear- ing on the birthday of the deceased or as 'newly added' memorials.

As we discuss in this paper, these templates enable the creation of a visually rich repre- sentation of the deceased chud and a means of communicating with and about the chud. More significantly, the compelling setting that is created with a web page affords a distinctive relational setting for both bereaved parent and deceased child. Specifically, the Web affords what Kenneth Grogan caUs 'absent presence' that state of divided or diverted consciousness ... [in which] one is physically present, but is absorbed by a technologically mediated world of elsewhere' (Layne, 2002, p. 227). We argue that the compeHng visual and communicative affor- dances of virtual memorials — the absent present they invite — may offer some parents a means of engaging and transforming the Uved experi- ence of their child's death into forms of sociality which include that absent child's presence. Not only does the Web afford this transcendence of time and space, but it enables a distinctive 'co- presence' or 'sense of being with other' (Zhao, 2003, p. 450) that is both deeply meaningful to parents and rich v\dth communicative poten- tial. Most sites offer a free trial period (a few weeks to a few months) after which the cli- ent must subscribe to a Web hosting package.

Lisa M Mitchell et al.

Some packages vary only by duration; others by storage size, graphics capacity and duration. From the Memory-ofcom site:

Creating and editing the memorial is free. Hosting is free for 2 weeks. Very modest monthly, annual or ever- lasting hosting fees are charged thereafter, a portion of which is donated to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (MemoryOf, 2009b)

Nearly all sites advertise themselves as 'free'; but few are without eventual costs. The fees vary, but are generally under US$100 if indi- viduals choose a one-time 'everlasting' fee (e.g., Memory-of com, Virtual-memorials.com). The on-line immortality and 'continuing' bonds promised by some memorial hosting sites as a property of Internet technology is, in fact, dependent on the user's continued willingness or ability to pay.

What is known about those who create vir- tual memorials? In one content analysis of one of the largest web cemeteries. Virtual Memorial Gardens, it was found that only about 10% of the memorials were created by parents for their chudren, while the largest number of memorials (about one-third of the total) were created by children for their parents (deVries & Rutherford, 2004, p. 14). A second study analyzing three other virtual cemeteries, found that just over 10% of memorials were for children under 18 years of age (Roberts & Vidal, 2000, p. 525). Roberts and Vidal (2000, p. 530) also found that about 28% of the memorials surveyed were addressed directly to the deceased, especially if they were created by women. While we have not done a systematic investigation of factors like ethnic- ity and class in our study, we have noticed that large minority groups (African-Americans, First Nations, for example) are conspicuous mainly due to their under-representation. While there are certainly sites created by mothers and fathers as well as posts by fathers and other male kin, our sense is that memorializing children and expressing grief on-line is predominantly done by women. A recent study of SIDS memo- rial websites found that they are 'overwhelm- ingly created by mothers' (Finlay & Krueger,

2011, p. 30). This may be linked to broad and longstanding cultural patterns which equate public expressions of grief, care of bodies and graves with women, as well as the forms of work women ofren do to record families — maintain- ing photo albums, writing Christmas letters, and scrap-booking activities (Wills, 2010). The issue of gender clearly merits frirther study, particu- larly regarding questions about gendered forms of bereavement and the finding in at least one study that mothers and fethers created memo- rial posts for sons more often than they did for daughters (Musambira et al., 2007, p. 272). There is considerable variation in the resulting memorials for children. Some template-based memorials are Uttle more than a home page vÁÚi the child's name, photograph, and brief descrip- tion and perhaps one or two additional pages of images; some are elaborate sites with pages for the 'child's story', slideshow, 'Daddy's girl', 'Friends', 'News stories', 'Organ donation cam- paign,' and so on. In this paper, we focus on the following: (1) the way in which deceased chil- dren are re-created virtually in text and images; (2) parents' use of the interactive capacity of the Web to sustain a relationship with the deceased; (3) the ways in which deceased children exist and Uve on through social networks of bereaved parents; and (4) the implications on-line memo- riaiization has for the construction of death itself As we suggest in the conclusion to the paper, all of these have impHcations for the overall well- being of those who utilize on-line memorials as a way of expressing and assuaging their grief

REPRESENTING THE DECEASED CHILD

Virtual websites provide parents with a virtual place to represent their deceased child through a limited suite of multiple media choices: background wallpaper, themes, and graphics, as well as by uploading user-generated content such as photographs, video, text, and music. Within these variations, the dominant colors of the sites are most ofren muted and pastel with background wallpaper of a faded lightiy colored image — clouds, angel wings, white roses, foot- prints in white sand, a teddy bear, or decorative hearts. Not insignificantly, these backgrounds

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evoke a sense of purity, softness, and innocence, characteristics commonly associated with children, especially young children. Memorials in which parents have selected intense or dark colored borders and backgrounds or bright font colors (hot pink, neon orange and Hme green) are evi- dence of the extent to which templates afford individuaUzation, but they are rare and visually jarring by comparison. What stands out against the subdued, softly colored backgrounds on most sites is the individual deceased chud, repre- sented through images and text.

Images, especially user-generated photo- graphs, figure prominently on the memorial sites. At a minimum, there is a photograph of the chud on the main page of the site, but most sites include additional photographs under a tab denoted as 'photo album' or 'sKde show'. On these pages, some parents choose to create a visual biography of snapshots, arranged chrono- logically. Usually this begins with a photograph of the mother during pregnancy, ultrasound images, and photographs of the child during infancy, birthdays, with friends, and with the family. Children engaged in the prototypi- cal activities of childhood: baseball. Brownies, swimming, with a pet, on a grandparent's lap, etc. The images are almost entirely of happy, active, vivacious, and loving and loved children. Even on sites for children who have died aft:er a protracted illness, there are relatively few pho- tographs of the child in bed or inactive. Video clips are infrequent — perhaps because they cost more to maintain on some sites due to their large size. As video production becomes more acces- sible, and storage space more affordable, video may become more commonplace.

Templates for websites also enable par- ents to provide textual representations of their child. Clicking tabs entitled 'X's Story' usually lead to pieces parents have written about the chud. These narratives ofren eulogize the child, describing the emotional significance of the child's birth for the parent(s), positive aspects of the child's character, endearing habits, vivid memories or anecdotes, accomplishments at school, particular talents (singing, sports), love for their family, commitment to their friends.

and strength of faith (see also Geser, 1998, p. 7). Poems and song lyrics are a common textual feature of the memorials, and some sites enable parents to add an audio button to hear the song. Especially common are Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven written to commemorate the death of the musician's young son and Avril Lavigne's Slipped Away, which has become a sort of anthem of remembrance to those who have died by suicide.

Less frequently, parents include examples of the child's writing and drawing. As one mother wrote: 'Here in cyberspace, I vwll try to create a place where [my daughter] can express her- self. Memorials for teenage children sometimes include a playlist to hear the child's favorite music. These are parental creations of salient cre- ative elements in their children's lives - where they have a continuing form of agency.

In images and texts on the sites, children are always depicted positively — even as 'perfect'— and referred to as 'hero', 'angel', 'princess'. These idealized representations of the child are especially evident in clip art displayed on the sites. Through butterflies, cute chubby angels, rainbows, wide-eyed teddy bears, and lacy val- entine style hearts underscored by phrases such as 'Daddy's Little Angel', 'God Needed an Angel', 'Too early too soon', and 'Special Girl', the deceased child appears as exemplifying the very best, and highly sentimentalized qualities of childhood. The chud is represented as special and unique, with desirable skills and tremendous potential, and as an individual bringing some- thing valuable and distinctive to their family, friends and community. Little or nothing is said about disobedience or misbehavior on the part of the child or strained parent—chud relationships. These are sites about hfe, about children as active, happy, joyful and as a source of deep pleasure and pride to their friends, families, and others. Thus, through text and image, parents both write their chud back into existence and create an extended social value for the deceased child (Godel, 2007).

Children's virtual memorials do not often include explicit descriptions of the child's death, although we note that at least one site

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enables parents to choose cause of death from the template drop down menu and have the selected cause appear on the memorial home page^. Some websites contain a brief mention of the circumstances of the child's death, but it is often non-specific. The child was 'taken', 'had to leave too early', or there was a 'tragic death'. A recurring exception here are memorials for children who died accidentally, especially in car accidents, drowning or drapery cord strangu- lation, which may include a description of the events surrounding the child's death. Memorials for children who have died following prolonged physical illness may document their s t r u ^ e s , but many do not. For children who committed suicide, there are generally only oblique refer- ences to a child's struggles with depression or mental illness; more often, what is highlighted is the parents' shock that their child was even contemplating ending his or her own life.

Very few sites include photographs of the child's funeral or even mention a funeral; although some include photos of the physical headstone or grave marker. What is particularly striking is the complete absence of images of the child after death. We note here the historical popularity of mortuary photography in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the USA (Ruby, 1995). The near absence of these photographs on the current memorials for school age children contrasts starkly with the growing practice of including photographs of death on virtual memorials for miscarried fetal remains or still bom infants (Godel, 2007). The absence of images of deceased children is, we believe, deeply significant and underscores the profoundly destabilizing impact of child death in an affluent, medicalized society. In some sense, masking the visibility of the death of a child may enable a new form of life for that child. Yet, we suggest that more is at work than simply hid- ing child death by not posting images of bed- ridden children or of a child's body in a casket. Specifically, the affordances of contemporary virtual memorials — the ability afforded to par- ents to update the site, to add or replace images

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and graphics, and, in particular, as we discuss in the next section, the capacity afforded for parents and others to communicate to the child are cen- tral to this sense of continuance. The memorial sites we are describing are essentially a way to construct the deceased child as existing in a kind of on-line afterlife where they have escaped both the travails of life and the limitations of death.

We turn now to the communicative affor- dance of virtual memorials, specifically the abil- ity to post comments to the sites. Nearly aU of the on-line memorials we have visited include posted comments. Individuals post brief com- ments to the site by 'lighting' a virtual candle, signing a virtual guestbook, or by sending a 'tribute;' each of these options is usually free. In addition, visitors can communicate by send- ing a 'gift', that is, purchasing a virtual flower, stuffed animal, balloon or other image to be displayed on the memorial. Tallies of categories of communication — candles lit or gifts sent, for example - are displayed on the front page of the memorial offering a sort of gauge or measure of sociality. As is common on other web pages memorials also have a counter tracking and dis- playing the number of'visitors' to the site.

It is not always possible to discern the rela- tionship of the post author to the child, but a few general points can be made. Again, we note that female kin, mothers, grandmothers and aunts make many of the posts to children's memorials. But there are also comments posted by a wide range of individuals - other family and friends of the deceased's child, the parents of those friends, the child's teachers, workmates of the bereaved parents, as well as by individu- als previously unknown to the child and his/ her parents, and even by individuals who come upon the site by accident. That many of the sites have built in links not only to post a comment but also to 'share' the site by email or to social networking sites like Facebook, is an affordance which, as we show in the next sections, encour- ages the social aspects of these sites and their forms of on-line bereavement. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss comments from parents and from individuals unknown to the family, particularly other bereaved parents.

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PARENTAL POSTS

Posted comments by parents are similar in many aspects of hnguistic style to those posted to a personal page on a social networking site or sent via cell phone text. They are brief, usually just a few Unes in length, informal and familiar in tone, and include language compression such as abbreviations and using numbers, single letters or other characters to represent a word or emo- tion (e.g., :-), I < 3 u****). While the longer narratives uploaded to the memorials on pages entitled 'His Story' or 'Our Precious Girl' are often written about the child in the third per- son, comments posted by parents address the child directly ('you'). Parental posts include fond salutations, nicknames, deep expressions of love, loss and sadness and hope for a time when parent and child are reunited. Parents send birthday wishes and holiday greetings, and updates of family events. Their posts include the mundane elements of daily life: seasonal changes; blooming gardens; the activities and accomplishments of siblings; family members; and friends.

I miss you my beautiful angel:

I think of you every second of the day and it still

brings tears to my eyes and I get a lump in my throat.

Mom

Mom lit a candle: 'Happy heavenly bday . I wish u were here to b 19.1 miss u and love u with all my heart buddy ... Have fun ok sweety?'

... I miss you more and more as the days come and go. People always say that it gets better with time ... but it hasn't for me in the 5 months that you've been gone; I know that death is a very sad thing but knowing that you will be there waiting for me gives me every reason not to be scared of death. Know always that your are sorely missed and deeply loved. Mama

Parents also instruct their deceased children ('be good', 'keep warm' 'be strong') and some- times ask for assistance.

Watch over auntie. She'll be missing us.

MOM lit a candle: 'K , surgery tomorrow, watch over me, keep me safe, R still needs me. I luv you tator bug'

hello pickle just lighting a quick candle to tell u to wrap up its rather nippy outside. All my love now and forever mummy xxxxxxxxxx

The themes noted here — expressions of sadness, watching over the living, reunion, and references to angels — have been noted in other surveys of web memorials (deVries & Rutherford, 2004). Our fmdings also echo the work of Williams and Merton (2009, p. 82) who found that 'adolescents continued visiting and posting to their dead peers' websites' months after the death. They, too, found that griev- en talked direcdy to the deceased, 'frequently discussed their current situations, new events taking place, and future plans as if the deceased were Hstening and stiU invested in the fiiture of the living' (Walter et al., 2011; Williams & Merton, 2009, p. 82).

Mothers and other female kin post comments regularly and frequendy (several times a month) and they continue to do so for several years. The compelling nature of this form of com- munication is evident particularly in the posts from parents and other kin who apologize to the deceased child for not posting more often or for missing a few days.

XXX Nite nite precious angel xxx Sorry for lack of can- dles but been to hosp every day with N's Mummy as her new baby due next week and they keeping a close eye on her:-) xx

There is some evidence in the posts that the communication is reciprocal. A few memorials include their accounts of 'signs' of the child's communication to them — a heart shaped pud- dle, a cat knocking over letters that spelled the child's name, a child's photograph found in an unexpected place. Whue we have not yet stud- ied in detail memorials hosted by Christian organizations, we note they do have a distinc- tive affordance — places for parents to display and share what are referred to as ADCs — After Death Communication.

The transcendence of time and space afforded by the Internet enables a continued visual pres- ence of the deceased anywhere, anytime, by anyone (Geser, 1998, p. 12). But virtual memo- rials do more than enable the deceased to be

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seen and known; one of the main characteristics of Web 2.0 memorials is their capacity to absorb new material from both parents and visitors to memorial sites. Thus, virtual memorials not only keep the deceased visually present, but enliv- ened and socially embedded — enmeshed in the on-going narrative and activities of a fam- ily, ascribing a social role and activities to the deceased, open and accessible to communica- tion from parents and family, and, as we will discuss shortly, supported by a grief community of known and unknown individuals.

Through their posted comments, parents can demonstrate publicly and to their child their own worth as parents; that is, as parents who care about and who will not forget their child, and who continue to nurture and communicate with that child. Moreover, comments posted to a child's memorial give further evidence of what it means to be a parent after the death of that child (Finlay & Krueger, 2011).

In contrast to the closed and private nature of a funeral (or a photo album in the home, or a box of cherished mementos kept in a closet) on-line memorials, as Codel (2007) suggests, blur or reconfigure a public-private dichotomy, extending what Aries (1981) called the 'cult of memory' into the unregulated anonymous pub- lic spaces of the Internet. We note that some virtual memorials have password-protected access and thus are 'private' and inaccessible to individuals who are unknown to the parents. Yet, the public and interactive affordance of the virtual memorials is evoked specifically by other parents who include text addressing the viewer, 'inviting' them to 'explore' the site, 'get to know' their child, and post comments, add photographs and anecdotes about the child. Creating the site and inviting the participation of others, even unknown \'iewers, is a way for parents to, as they say, 'do something' for their child, by which they often mean, ensure that the child is not forgotten (see also Roberts, 2004, pp. 61—62). The public-ness of these sites may underlie the perfection of represented children; children in public view are often entreated to be on their 'best behavior'. These sites make a deceased child public and accessible in a way that

many Canadians might find unthinkable for a live child. Furthermore, what we have found on some memorials is the importance to bereaved parents of 'sharing' their child with others out- side the Emily. Evoked here is the idea that a child who dies does not 'belong' only to the family, but is 'a gift' not only to parents but also to others. The notion of deceased children as 'gifts' and as 'shared' with strangers opens up questions about the implicit notion that children are essentially property, or owned in the first place. At one level, of course, simply by creat- ing the on-line memorial, some parents are both anticipating viewers and willing to make their child public. But, the technology fiirther affords this transformation of the child into a public gift. Many memorial sites have built in links to 'share' the site by email, Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. In fact, the social, relational, and public and interactive potential of the sites is engaged specifically by some parents who enable view- ers to not only view the site but sign the vir- tual guestbook and post comments. So, what do those outside the family say in their comments to these memorial sites?

POSTS BY OTHER BEREAVED PARENTS

Among those individuals posting to the site but unknown to the family of the deceased are other bereaved parents - again, usually mothers, many of whom refer to themselves as 'Angel mom- mies'. Bereaved mothers often post comments directly to the parents of the child featured in the memorial. These comments frequently affirm and acknowledge the pain and suffering which they know parents are feeling and they identify the loss of a child as something unique. For example, bereaved parents speak of being 'connected forever', 'going down a road with no return', and of being part of a special group.

... It's a road no one wants to go down, but once you have you can never come back. Thank you for sharing your angel with me. I know we don't physically know each other, but I feel that bereaved parents are con- nected forever. I admire you for being so strong such a wonderful inspiration to others and for being such a great mommy to your angel. God bless you and your family. -Angel Mommy To C ~

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I am so very sorry for your loss. There is no greater pain than losing a child. Your journey has just begun. You will find so much love and support on this site as you continue to share your beautifiil L with all of us. As you read about other children who have lefi: this world way too soon, you will see a special link with all of our children. It will not ease the pain, but may give you hope at times when you feel there is none. There are so many of those times as you and your family walk this road. Please know that you all are in our thoughts and prayers. I look forward to learning more about L and will stop by again. God Bless!

P.S. I see that L has a brother by the name of D , that is my son's middle name.

In some cases parental comments respond to a newly bereaved parent's anguished plea for someone to whom they can talk or who wiU understand their pain. The posts directed at par- ents often contain advice.

Dear A ,

The holidays are the worst times especially the first year. Take one breath 1 min and breathe again and one step at a time. Remember be kind to yourself. Sending cyber hugs.

Mom To G (Forever Four)

I am sorry for your loss ... I wish I could tell you that the pain will go away but I have yet to find relief from my own pain. I will pray for you and the family ... God be with you. S mother of D .

We have noticed that some bereaved moth- ers post repeatedly to multiple sites, promising to return or 'stop in again', evoking the language of neigjibours who migjit drop by to comfort a femily.

God bless you and your family. G is such a beauti- fiil little girl. I'm so sorry for your loss. My litde boy died ... Grief can be overwhelming at times. If you ever need to talk, let me know. I'll be there for you.

I don't know if I'm doing this correcdy? I just wanted to express my feelings of loss to all of you and for myself, who lost a 31-year-old son ... I wish I had a computer at home. I think this wotild be good for me. It is a worry for me of how I've been thinking lately. I'm not liking my family too much lately either. No one talks about him, including my kids. They give me these one liners. I'm angry, I'm so very sad, I'm alone in my thoughts and I'm alone even though I'm married, but not to the father of my son. Divorced. I tried to call

my ex up and talk to him but he didn't return my call. I would be so nice to talk to him because he is the only one who knows how I feel. We were talking before?

... I have good days and a lot of bad ones. I went back to work after 2 weeks and now am so miserable ... 1 hate coming to work. They do not understand and expect me to just be 'back to normal'. I am ready to just walk out and stay home. I wanted to let you know that I really liked your site. Read every page. It also helps me touch base with someone who has lost their child at the same age. I feel I can relate better. I hope I hear from you. I would love to continue to talk.

Not unexpectedly perhaps, deceased children figure prominently in posts from other par- ents. Bereaved parents may note a connection between their own child and the child in the memorial; the same name, same birthday, same cause of death. Praise for 'sharing' the child is twinned with praise for making the site; both indicate 'being a good parent'. Sharing also enables a distinctive kind of sociality in which bereaved parents address their posts directly to the deceased child, inviting him or her to know and engage with their own chud.

R 's Mom lit a candle: 'G I hope your skat- boarding with my R in Heaven. Love & prayers to you & your family. I care'

Us Mom Ut a candle: 'T I will keep you in my prayers and please be a friend to my L I worry about him being alone'

Dear K 's family

my heart breaks for you all in the Loss of your sweet Angel

My son O also had AML and BMT he lost his battle with Leukemia ...

My O loved playing Uno too:-) one of his litde friends D is in heaven to so maybe the three of them can get together for a game:-)

I know how much you miss your brave Daughter as my O would say 'leukemia sux'

with Love O 's Mum

my baby boy is up there too, maybe you can be angel friends x x x

My thoughts are with you, your daughter is safe with mine playing with the other angels xxxx

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In addition to suggestions for play dates and companionship, there are in\'itations for birthdays and for 'Angelversaries*. These kinds of connec- tions add to the sense that deceased children have a life enabled by the Internet. In order to make these social connections among deceased children, bereaved parents often include in their comments hyperlinks to their own child's memorial. A few memorial site templates specifically afford these connections between or among deceased chil- dren, encouraging visitors to help the deceased make these 'angel friends' or 'Forever Friends' by including links to other children's on-line memo- rials. Roberts (2004) refers to these links among web memorials as 'web rings' and notes they are 'most often created for deceased children' (p. 42). The existence of these links enables a distinctive web surfing, one in which the viewer moves firom one memorial to another, from one dead child to another, from one anguished parent to another, potentially building a distinctive form of sociality. We highlight the role of memorial templates in affording such sociality. At least one site^ allows visitors to construct a 'Garden*. Visitors select particular memorials, identify their relationship to that deceased individual from a lengthy drop down menu, and then indicate if they wish to receive text m e s s i e or email notifications about updates to the selected memorials. This way of understanding the Internet and death as a spe- cial kind of place is deeply connected to com- mon but also archaic spatial notions of an afterlife; essentially as a kind of heaven where the deceased constitute a community of souls or spirits which communicate with each other, as well as at times, with the living.

Because child deaths are far less common in the general population, many bereaved par- ents do not know anyone else in their imme- diate social network that has experienced this kind of loss. Afforded through the Web, the co-presence of other bereaved parents — the sense of being with those who understand — may provide a helpful sense of community (Walter et al., 2011, p. 290) and, as Finlay and Krueger (2011, p. 39) articulate, can be seen as

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an important part of grief work in which parents publically present 'themselves to outsiders as individuals in mourning*. The connections and sociality afforded by the virtual memorials may be particularly important for parents who have a lost a child to a rare disease (see Geser, 1998; Roberts, 2004). This function of virtual memorials may reflect what Geser (1998) has described as a 'trend toward ... the substitution of professional services by informal 'self-help* circles' (p. 7). While some comments indicate a willingness to talk, there is little evidence of any interaction or dialogue actually occurring, but perhaps it is taking place elsewhere (e.g., on email, Facebook, telephone). We also note there are links on some memorial hosting sites for grief resources, including an on-call grief counselor.

We have also seen many virtual memorials for children that include evidence of the ways in which parents seek to transform the death of their child into forms of social action. The more common forms of social action include memorial scholarships, raising fiinds for animal shelters, public awareness campaigns for specific diseases and causes of death (mothers against drunk driving, youth suicide prevention, SIDS, medical negligence, murder, drapery cord stran- gulations). The Web affords this kind of contact by serving both as a resource and as a stream of continuing communication for those who wish to become involved in on-going social action, or to initiate it as well. For example, one African-American woman took the story of her son's death due to gang violence to the news media. This galvanized a group of mothers, all of whom had lost adolescent boys to violence in their neighborhood, to hold a demonstra- tion about inadequate policing, poverty and lack of parental responsibility for African-American youth. Their grief became conjoined with social justice, and prevention of violence. They saw their sons' deaths as something that should not have happened in a just society.

Creating memorials can be therapeutic due to shared grief with others who 'understand' but are not part of the immediate circle of friends. It should be noted that friends and family some- times say precisely the 'wrong thing' to bereaved

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parents. Comments Uke, 'Don't worry, you can always have another one', or 'At least s/he lived to see her/his own child bom' are especially commonplace; tbe second phrase directed to parents whose adult children have died. While they may be well intentioned, as we suggested earlier, such phrases may strongly 'discount' or disenfranchise the emotional experience of the bereaved parent. Sucb comments are notice- ably absent from web memorials wbere posts from others may even address some of the fatu- ous commentary offered by those who have not shared the experience. Postings that affirm that bereaved parents can never truly sbare tbeir grief with anyone other than another bereaved par- ent may offer transient solace, however, because tbey also imply tbat tbe suffering parent occupies a kind of invisible, even permanent, Uminal state.

P O S T S BY OTHER INDIVIDUALS UNKNOWN TO

THE FAMILY

Tbere are a significant number of posts from individuals otber tban bereaved parents wbo identify as unknown to tbe family and wbo post comments Hke, 'I came across tbis site by acci- dent ... so sorry for your loss'. As evident in these examples, there are a variety of ways to 'happen' upon an on-line deceased cbud and bis/her bereaved parents.

I found this story by accident and was taken back ... Just to let you know, your family is in the prayers of unknown others.

I've come across the video? becatise my sons name is [the same as yours]. This is so heartbreaking ... I am sssoooo incredibly sorry for your loss. God bless you and your family. You will always be in my thoughts ... I pray for your strength and courage.

I hope you can find the strength to go on as before. I have not been thru anything even similar but watching your memorial site was very emotional for me. May you one day find peace. Again my deepest condolences.

Tbe emotional tenor of many of tbe quotes by 'passers-by' is striking; tbe individuals describe being moved to tears, 'weeping', and feeling deep sadness for individuals tbey never knew. Tbe rieb photographic, audio, and narrative ele- ments of many of the children's memorials does

create the sense that the viewer has, even just briefly, 'gotten to know' the child and his or her family. Nevertheless, we would suggest that those who 'drop by' or 'bappen upon' children's memorials seem to engage in a particular form of sociality common on the Web — an anony- mous intimacy in wbich viewers offer heartfelt messages to strangers, without sustained social contact. But these sorts of messages also implic- itly offer social approval to the bereaved par- ents, approval of bow tbe cbild is depicted and approval for sharing that child.

Two sorts of posts from strangers seem to offer something different. One, we have noticed that there are individuals other than bereaved parents who post to multiple sites with cut and pasted com- ments — only the name of the deceased is changed. These posts contain inspirational messages, usu- ally from religious sctipture and they contain specific advice for parents; to pray and to turn to the Bible and to God for strengtb and direction. We are speculating here, but posting sucb com- ments to virtual memorials feels like a new form of evangelism or door-to-door proselytizing. Two, altbougb they are very rare, there are some nega- tive comments. Since hosting services specifically for memorials enable tbe site creator to moder- ate and disable comments, it may be that negative comments occur more frequently, but are deleted. We bave found negative comments in response to memotiak posted t b r o u ^ YouTube, but only on sites wbich contain images of a cbild's corpse. Tbe objection in tbese comments appears to be a con- cern with proptiety, with making an intensely pri- vate matter into a public spectacle. Perhaps these images provoke strong negative reactions because sucb very early deatbs are usually not only bidden, but unspoken. Or, perhaps it is precisely because tbese images do not blur tbe boundary between tbe dead and tbe living and do not enable a dead child to 'live on' in pleasing images.

CONCLUSION

We have suggested here that the dead can now live on visually and socially in and through the aSbrdances of the Web and in particular, tbat deceased cbildren represented tbrougji virtual memotiak in some sense exist and live on tbrougb

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social networks of bereaved parents. Enabled by the a-temporal space of the Internet and the technologically constituted co-presence of virtual communication, deceased children are parented and nurtured, encouraged to interact with other dead children, and attract the communication of people whom they never met in their lifetimes. Furthermore, in the social setting enabled by vir- tual memorials the usual 'rules' about reciprocal interaction are loosened, and the dead appear to be accessible, present, attentive, listening and some- times even communicative (Walter et al., 2011, p. 16). The interaction between bereaved parents, femily, ftiends and the viàder public contributes to this on-line memorialization of children, who in a sense, never really recede after they go 'on-line', but are transformed into enduring but novel versions of their remembered lives, liberated from conven- tional experience of linear time. Furthermore, this emerging construction of death is deeply rooted in profoundly spatialized ideas about an eternal after- life as a culturally defined place. Accessible anytime and from anywhere, the deceased child is always there, on the Web or on the computer screen; not lost, not gone, but there. For some parents and viewers, virtual memorials may be a less a place and more a communication portal by which to communicate with the deceased child in heaven. Virtual memorials may even imply a kind of ethe- real techno-presence whereby the idea of heaven is being reconfigured as technologically mediated space/time: a digital set of pearly gates.

In closing, we return to the issue of parental bereavement and grief in this technologically and socially mediated context. We argue that under the guise of addressing or even treating parental grief, on-line memorials may do more than simply accommodate that grief; they may perpetuate it. By enabling the deceased to persist, parenting to con- tinue, and grief to be continually communicated, acknowledged and legitimated within a commu- nity of bereaved parents and a wider public, the Web affords an on-going grief that is unhinged partially from longstanding ideas of 'closure*, pri- vacy, and a separation of the living and the dead. The movement and maintenance of deceased individuals into the 'cloud' (a physical metaphor of heavenly space) storage of memorial websites

can also be viewed as part of what Becker (2000) describes as the '... current discourses of techno- science, body, nature, and even life ... described as code, text, or information. On the one hand, classical dichotomies (body/mind, subject/object, man/machine) and their restrictions are dissolvings on the other hand, this discourse often reveals a hidden desire to ignore both the fragility and sense giving capacity of materiality' (p. 361). To the list of 'classical dichotomies' we can add: life/death and body/soul (which predates body/mind and persists in contemporary religious imaginations) and, the more recent on-line/off-line.

We argue that this blurring of dichotomies, openness, and a-temporal and a-spatial nature of grief is particularly so for challenging or 'socially problematic' forms of death (Walter et al., 2011, p. 286), such as those of children. While that aspect of on-line memorials might be seen as counterproductive, we argue that the enduring bereavement afforded by the Web is precisely its attraction and value for parents whose children have died. As bereavement workers are increas- ingly coming to realize, for parents their 'grief is [their] link to the child, grief [is what] keeps [them] connected* (Arnold & Gemma cited in Corr, Fuller, Bamickol, & Corr, 1991, pp. 50—51). And, in this sense, virtual memorials enable that link, that 'continuous bond'.

Clearly virtual memorials evoke the recent trend in bereavement care that death may lead to an altered, rather than a severed, relationship between the living and the deceased (Howarth, 2000; Klass et al., 1996). The notion that the dead are present in the lives of the living as forces or entities which can move between dimensions is one that will be familiar to many members of non-Western cultural traditions, and to students of religions which emphasize founding ancestors, 'dream times', villages of the dead, for example. Indeed, there are historical examples of technol- ogy mediating the usually separate worlds of the living and the dead. Spiritualist sects during the 19th and early 20th century began to flourish with the electrical revolution and the advent of radio. In some respects, as we argue, the Web — especially Web 2.0 — can greatly enhance this type of relational sensibility because it is experienced

Death and grief on-line

as a kind of disembodied realm where the Hv- ing take on virtual forms, and entirely novel vir- tual entities can also come into being. As such, the cultural construction of death as a form of on-line afterlife has developed and appears to be transforming death itself into a virtual realm. When conflated with common metaphors for digital storage space such as 'the Cloud', notions of an on-Hne afterHfe have become normative expressions of the bereaved who use Web 2.0 technologies to deal with grief The deaths of children may bring this into especially sharp reHef because they invert prevaiHng cultural expecta- tions about Hfe course, aging and death. If we expect our children to Hve on long after us, but they die long before we do, perhaps the nature of the separation itself can more easily be under- stood to He in an ambiguously defmed time and space — an absent present. It is possible to see on- Hne memorials as a communication process that moves in both directions — from Hving to dead and back again. For example, FinalThoughts. com allows a person to share their final wishes and feeHngs with friends, relatives, and pets after death. Besides hosting email messages deHvered, Hterally from the grave (a designated 'guardian angel' alerts the site to your demise) subscribed members of FinalThoughts can attach various forms to emau messages. The forms include: The Personal Property Allocator'™; Pet Lover's Organizer''"'*'; and Final Arrangements Planner^"^. In discussing this communication between the Hving and the dead, Jones (2004) notes:

... the technologies that bring us together via media- tion are also ones recording our interactions, and we are coming increasingly to save those interactions, external- izing our memory and interactions with others, living or dead. Like the protagonist o f Minority Report' who relives a conversation with his deceased son, or like the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks who have record- ings of last e-mails and phone conversations, we have at least increased the number of ways we have to maintain presence. As we move into newer media and experi- ence still newer media technologies such as immersive virtual reality, we will no doubt increase the quantity of the means of presence . . . . (p. 87)

Jones (2004) goes on to conclude, how- ever, that, '... our desire to remember and be

retnembered, and our need to grieve, have not, and wiU not, change' (p. 87). Unlike Jones, we suggest that shaping grief through the affor- dances of technology may in fact be transform- ing bereavement and grief because a continuing interactive and engaged presence of the dead on the Internet has the potential, at least, to prolong grief, rather than assuage it. Perhaps this happens through a denial of corporeal existence: embod- ied Hving. As Becker (2000) states, '... notions of virtual identities, bodily representations in cyber- space, and extropian dreams of a post-biological self all have one thing in common: they ignore or denigrate the dynamic and sensory capacity of materiahty, both in the world and in our own bodies' (p. 362). As such, prolonged grief in pub- Hc virtual space may also be transforming con- structions of death, and by virtue of that, also of Hfe in our society, in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. O n the other hand, these construc- tions also seem to be reproducing a set of very old beHeß about an afterHfe prototypicaUy asso- ciated with concrete ideas of a populated place. As such these kinds of imaginings, as Becker (2000) notes, 'are not revolutionary approaches in developing new concepts of identity. Instead they are a reconstruction of old fantasies which are returning in new technological clothes and making a great deal of noise' (p. 365).

There are many ways in which bereaved par- ents seem to be 'primed' to be on the Internet. They are isolated and transformed fiindamen- tally by the death of their child; that is, parents appear not to be in the world or in their bod- ies in the same way, ever again. They are, then, an etnbodiment of the absent presence, Hving without that child but Hving only as a shadow of their former self, here but forever incomplete. The shift in reaHty, in sensation, in perception creates an embodied relational sensibüity that for some may mesh well with having a virtual chud. Yet parents who create and maintain on-Hne memorials and social networks for their dead children may find they cannot easily leave the virtual places they produce. For this would mean both 'abandoning' the deceased chud, ending a form of parenting, and severing the on-going relationships with the dead that others - family.

Lisa M Mitchell et al.

friends and even strangers — have developed. The palpable presence of someone who is physically absent defines the haunting experience of grief When that someone is a child one has brought into the world any expectation that their death could be somehow put safely away without on- going communication seems to lack both com- passion and common sense.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research reported on here was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Mary Ellen Macdonald was the Principal Investigator, Lisa Mitchell, Peter Stephenson and Susan Cadell are Co-investigatgors. An earlier version of this paper was presented at 'Death Down Under' Conference, University of Sydney, June 27, 2011 by Peter Stephenson and at the American Anthropological Association Conference, Montreal, November 19. 2011 by Lisa Mitchell.

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Received 23 September 2011 Accepted 17 August 2012

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