Stay in touch: Services offer life after death

In today's world of always-connected social media, there's no reason to stop interacting online simply because you're dead.

A wave of new companies is starting to offer services such as virtual cemeteries and e-mail alerts set up by funeral homes to remind relatives about the anniversary of your death.

Some companies even offer to e-mail your wayward relatives in danger of being left behind after the Rapture.

Although such services seem to reach beyond the grave, a growing generation of funeral customers refuse to let death have the final word.

"People have a desire to perpetuate not only for themselves, but for their loved ones, the story of their lives, and technology has all these new great ways of doing that," said John McQueen, owner of the Anderson McQueen funeral home.

As baby boomers plunged headlong into online social media in recent years, they have become especially interested in upending the traditional philosophy that funerals are really meant for the survivors. After all, this is the "Me Generation."

But beyond generational vagaries, technology now means a funeral can be the start of a virtual afterlife. And entrepreneurial companies are there to make that happen.

Afterlife services

Los Angeles-based EternalSpace.com launched its Web site in March, offering virtual scenic locations for a person's final resting place: A "Zen Garden," a "Lake View," a "Tropical Valley" and other options.

Sold through funeral homes, the service allows a person or relatives to establish a pastoral gravesite and add digital amenities such as the image of a park bench or mausoleum. Visitors can buy items to leave behind, such as flowers, religious icons and other trinkets symbolically important to the deceased, such as golf clubs, a horse saddle, a piano or trees that can grow. Prices for each range from $5 to $35 apiece.

Typically, a funeral home includes the cost of a virtual world along with the price of a funeral service, said Jay Goss, vice president of development for the site. If bought separately, that scenic online site could cost a few hundred dollars, he said.

"This gives people the opportunity to do not just flowers," Goss said.

The Charlestown, Mass.-based obituary site Tributes.com has hundreds of thousands of profile pages, based on death information from the Social Security Administration. Soon, executives with the site expect to offer pre-death services so people can plan their online profiles to run after their funeral.

"For many people, they're saying 'This is my celebration, and here are my thoughts,'" said John Heald, vice president of business development. "They're challenging us to do things out of the box."

Michelle Costley of Tampa felt compelled to do something online when her father, Thomas Michael Costley, died in January. After a quick Google search for "Online Memorial," she found Legacy.com and built a profile page with her father's picture, a place to donate to the National Kidney Foundation, a photo gallery and a memory book.

"He was constantly on e-mail and a big Facebook fan, so I think he'd be appreciative," Costley said. "The site has really been helpful to myself and others, I believe. Sometimes when I'm down, it's nice to pull up the site and be able to look at his face."

Facebook

For users of the world's most popular social media Web site, Facebook offers a way to leave the ultimate status update.

Already, Facebook has become a central hub for news that a person has died - with their home page functioning as an ad hoc trading post for information about the funeral and gathering place for condolence notes.

After that initial phase, relatives can ask Facebook to place the dead person's page into a "Memorial State" that limits use to certain friends and family members. To trigger that process, family members typically must send Facebook a newspaper clipping about the person's death or a death notice from a local government.

Facebook launched the feature after the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, when students flocked to one another's pages to make comments.

In the next few months, McQueen expects his funeral home will add more digital features, including e-mail reminders that customers can set up for distribution on key dates.

"This would come after you visited a person's online profile," McQueen said. "It would auto-send you notification that this person's birthday is coming up next week, so you might want to drop his wife a card or call. That could go on indefinitely."

Baby boomers

Funeral directors expect more baby boomers will create a vibrant online life after death.

"We're all watching the baby boomers starting to ask what it's going to be like when they die," said Alan Creedy, a Raleigh, N.C., consultant to the funeral industry. "Boomers are looking at the funeral as a form of self-expression."

And with so many boomers active online, Creedy said, they have become accustomed to creating virtual worlds to stay in contact with friends, family and co-workers - no matter the circumstances.

Creedy has seen a small but steady uptick in the number of first-person obituaries, drafted for publication upon a person's death.

In his hometown, Creedy saw the famous North Carolina State University women's basketball coach Kay Yow film her eulogy to be played at her funeral in January. The video was quickly picked up by local TV stations and on YouTube, where it has been watched thousands of times.

The end times

For people who worry about those left behind when they die, there are some new services to help.

The Harwich, Mass.-based Web site Youve BeenLeftBehind.com promises to save your advice for relatives and friends whom you fear might not make it to heaven should the end of the world occur.

The computer system is designed to detect the Rapture: A group of several faithful families, geographically dispersed, log into the system daily, and their failure to do so trips the switch. In that event, the system presumes those families were taken up in the Rapture and sends out your last-chance advice to a list of addressees.

Several hundred customers have signed up to pay $14.95 a year since the site launched a year ago.

"I did set up a message to go to my wife," said Mark Heard, founder of the site. "She was the inspiration for the whole thing because she's not really on board with me in this belief."