The way we memorialize the ones we have lost in the digital age is so sweet. Like, “I make a tribute to my friend who died in every Minecraft server I play in” on the surface sounds weird, cringy even, but not only is it an apt tribute to the relationship they had with their friend, this is literally a textbook definition of grief ritual.
Doing things digitally just seems weird to us because there isn't hundreds of years of tradition behind it like more traditional grief rituals, so we are sort of paving a new path and outlet for grief in pretty much entirely uncharted territory, which is honestly really cool?
Very recently I lost a close, long term online friend who I never got the chance to meet up with in person and for the first couple of weeks I didn't know what to do about all of the feelings of grief I had because its a very modern and new problem that there just isn't a guidebook for yet. It feels weird to honor him physically when I exclusively knew him digitally, and even my therapist has said this is a scenario that she hasn't really encountered before, and is helping me find healthy digital grief rituals like continuing to send him funny memes I come across, and going through my old chat logs with him and pinning messages from him that make me smile.
I even reached out to a furry artist and commissioned a short comic based on one of our early conversations and rps from like 10+ years ago that I really liked. At first the idea of "commemorative furry art" in my head sounded like the cringiest thing in the world, but after talking about it more with friends and my therapist, its really not all that different than more traditional established grief rituals and if it represents the relationship we had and makes me feel closer to them, why not? We are the ones writing the rule book for digital grief rituals.
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
dededos
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
