Even while my 21-year-old brother was stationed in Italy with the US Air Force, he could always make me laugh, whether via AIM, Xanga or MySpace. For the past two years, the online Zach is the Zach I’ve gotten to know best, as I’ve been accompanied by ShadowsandDust7’s presence in my buddy list and followed stories of his adventures snowboarding, rock climbing and hiking in the Italian Alps on his blogs.
Thus, when I received the awful news that my brother had died in a hiking accident, one of the first places that I turned to was his MySpace. His last login was 4/20/2007 — and that salient date-stamp will always remain the same. When I opened his site in a state of initial denial (”Zach can’t be gone — he just left a comment yesterday!”), I found that dozens of friends had already left messages, not about Zach but TO him:
“Zach dude, we missed you today man. I had a sweet assist to Ruben. I was really looking forward to seeing you up in California in a couple of months. I guess i’ll have to delay seeing you for a little longer.”
As grief and the celebration of Zach’s life unfolded and as friends continued to “keep in touch” with Zach via MySpace and the memorial blog we set up, I encountered facets of social media that I’d never thought much about before:
MySpace was how many of Zach’s long-distance friends knew him best while he was stationed in the Air Force in Italy, and online, it’s almost as if nothing had happened: His page looks the same as ever. Though Zach is physically gone, his MySpace presence feels alive. And so people go there to “be with” Zach. Instead of talking to a tombstone in the land of the dead, it’s like you’re chatting with a friend amidst a community of the living.
A person’s physical mark can erode or change relatively quickly. But according to recently-announced policies, “MySpace won’t delete a profile for inactivity, and it also won’t let anyone else control a deceased member’s profile” [1] and Facebook “will put the page in a memorialized state indefinitely” [2] when notified of a person’s death (unless a family member requests that the profile be removed). Zach’s bedroom may not always be his room, but his online spaces will endure.
As people are becoming increasingly aware of the role that online communities play in the grieving process (NY Times: Rituals of Grief Go Online), which has been most recently brought to light by Virginia Tech (USA Today: Slain Students’ Pages to Stay On Facebook) and Iraq (AP: Fallen Soldiers’ MySpace Profiles Live On), it makes me wonder how this role will continue to evolve.
Will we see the emergence of more explicit policies regarding members who die (I had a hard time finding any policies — including for email addresses — about what happens when the user dies.) Is there a place for online “cemeteries” — sites to help friends and family, perhaps far in the future, easily find and revisit their loved one’s online presence (MyDeathSpace seems like a slightly morbid attempt to create such a thing)? How enduring will online memorials prove to be in the long run? (After all, the web is only in its twenties.)
For now, in these first weeks after Zach’s death, it’s been comforting to still “have Zach around.” Instead of an awkward new ritual of leaving flowers at his graveside, I can leave messages for him the way I always have. There will always be things that only Zach would understand, and it’s nice to know that there’s still a place I can share them.
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