Listening to your favorite song on the radio is always more pleasurable than on a CD player in the car because you’re tapping into the collective versus solitude listening experience. I’d say the logic applies to sharing memories. It’s always more enriching to collectively reminiscence. Especially after someone dies because memory has the power to immortalize the dead. On a new social networking site called Respectance.com I created an online tribute complete with my mother’s name, photo, dates of life 1948 – 2002 and a few words on how she spent the dash. When I completed my tribute, I realized that now my mother has her own web page that I can visit and add memories, photos, slideshows and videos to upon inspiration. I felt a ping of excitement when her photograph rose to the top of recent tributes. My new web page transmuted my mother from anonymity. Techcrunch.com called Respectance.com “Myspace for the dead”.

I’m in the midst of researching how technology is reinventing memorial rituals for my book “Parting Ways” and this really strikes me as a way to keep our memories alive. I like the light, heavenly feel of Respectance. I’ve visited other web sites that have succeeded in carving out a sacred space online for memorializing such as Legacy.com, virtual-memorials.com, virtualmemorialsonline.com, memory-of.com, and rememberedforever.com. Each of the web sites offer a variety of tools and experiences for remembering a life. You can create a virtual headstone, light a virtual candle, send a message to the dead and design life tribute slideshows and timelines. Some of them feel more like visiting a virtual cemetery or funeral home. Others remind me of standing in front of a memorial wall. It’s a great way to get in touch with what’s often intangible–feelings of loss. Memories are salve for grief and the healing power of the salve increases when they’re shared. Geographical boundaries no longer limit us from spending time in reflection at a memorial site.

What’s even more unique about these online memorials versus the ones in the cemetery are they shed light on how the person spent their dash. Here is the poem called “Dash” by Linda Ellis that I heard at a group memorial service last November.

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the date on her tombstone from the beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears
But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For the dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth
And now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not how much we own. The cars, the house, the cash
What matters is how we live and learn and how we spend our dash…