This week we experienced the passing of a former student from our campus. It is the one event that I hoped to never encounter as a student executive. The logistics of how to deal with the death of a student are complicated, and they become more difficult when the person who is gone is someone that you considered a friend.

When the news hit me, it was several days after learning that a colleague’s son had passed away. I didn’t know of the relationship at the time and when I realized through a post on Facebook, that I knew him, I was left staring at my laptop unable to process the connection. A few days earlier we had discussed in class the difference between being notified of a death via cell phone and landline. I had been notified, by chance, via text on a screen and a video from the dance class that I took with this person.

The ways in which we grieve have been shifted by online interactions. Prior to online community the grieving process was carried out either as a group, or as a single person. The option now exists to grieve in private, while experiencing community in an online platform. Memorial pages are created, where friends and family can post thoughts and prayers, or share stories about the individual. When a famous person passes away, Twitter will light up with hashtags and condolences. But how much does the internet actually contribute to the grieving process and is it hurting or helping those who remain?

I ask this as I create an event on Facebook, notifying the students of a campus memorial. In some ways it feels fake and cold. My filters are turned to maximum as I struggle to create sentences that correctly identify not only the time and place, but the place that the individual still holds although he is no longer here. How do I make this not about me, or the student association, or the venue in which the memorial will take place. How do I tell people about it without resorting to marketing tactics that are designed to bring in large groups? How do I maintain the humanity in an online space?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/17/death-social-media-grief-facebook-twitter-text

Like the writer of the above article, I think that we are still trying to figure out how to grieve online. Stratification of communications may have increased the intricacy of the social web, but it does not discount the fact that we still need a place to grieve, or as Inside Out puts it, we still need to be blue. How we blue will be an ever changing process, shifted by cultural expectation and norms, but the need to blue will remain.