SOS of Dane County Newsletter
April 2000, Vol6 Issue22

An Electronic Sense of Family Eases a Time of Grief
By Tamara E. Holmes
Reprinted from - USA Today's Tech News & Views

I have often wondered how effective community- based support sites are for people who are mourning the death of a loved one.

With interest, I've read of Web-based tributes, and I've witnessed the heightened activity on community-based sites during tragedies such as the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.

But one cannot truly gauge whether online support sites are helpful until grief hits home. For me, that happened with the death of my grandmother.

Like many before me, I turned to the Web to see what solace it had to offer. What I found was a treasure-trove of useful information ranging from tips for coping with grief to sites for virtual hand-holding.

The first place I turned was the Net's classic Usenet messaging system. A search for "grief" on Deja.com pointed me to several newsgroups dealing with loss and tragedy.

The sheer variety of newsgroups in this category reminded me that there's something for everyone on the Net. There are groups for people who've lost loved ones to suicide, for those who have lost siblings-even for those who have lost pets.

I decided to try alt.support.grief. Because the Internet gives many a false sense of anonymity; I was not surprised to find people expressing their grief with an openness that is uncharacteristic in day-to-day life. As a result, the messages posted were extremely moving, as people felt free to let their guard down without thinking they were totally unmasked.

However, unlike many newsgroups message boards I've participated in, most of the subscribers seemed more interested in responding to the pain of others than seeing their own words in print.

I immediately got the feeling that the group's regulars were a close-knit bunch, giving the newsgroup a small-town kind of feel. But words of welcome were freely issued to newsgroup newcomers, and subscribers were not only encouraged to share, but applauded for being honest with their feelings.

One person, who referred to herself as Shonda, summed up the group's impact on her life by saying, "I just wanted to thank everyone who responded to my first entry into the newsgroup the other day. It felt so good to know that there were so many others that knew of my pain and were genuinely concerned for my well-being. Thank you all so much."

Though I wasn't in the mood to share, I, like Shonda, found myself relating to much of what was said. It was uplifting just to know that others were experiencing similar feelings.

Usenet isn't the only source of community on the Net. Internet mailing lists offer another gateway to messaging online.

List-hosting sites such as eGroups.com are home to thousands of mailing lists that let users read postings on the Web or have messages sent to them via e-mail. Mailing lists are generally more private than newsgroups and message boards because the messages come to you rather than you logging on to the newsgroup and sorting through messages.

The mailing list search site www.liszt.com boasts a directory of more than 90,000 lists. Again, I found several mailing lists designed to guide people through periods of grief and loss.

While the community sites were moving, I found the many informational sites on the Web to be just as helpful. After all, grief is a process. It's often easier to deal with something if you know what to expect.

Any Web search will pull up a long list of sites on loss and bereavement. Many are designed primarily to market products and services for funerals; but that doesn't preclude them from offering valuable information. For example, www.grief.com is the Web page of the Falk Funeral Home in Pennsburg, VA, yet the site contains information on the stages of grief as well.

Commercialization has fueled a host of online shopping nightmares, privacy infringements and cyberterrorism fears. But in looking to the Net to soothe my own grief, I was reassured that it's still capable of bringing people and information together in a way that matters.