Type the word “grief” into the Facebook search bar, and a number of bereavement support groups will appear. “Grief Inspiration” (641 members). “Healing Hugs” (48,000 members). “Silent Tears” (185,000 members). Some of these groups are private – you can neither post nor see what’s posted until a moderator approves. Others are public, meaning anyone, including a nosy journalist, can click in and scroll through dispatches from bereaved spouses, parents, sons, daughters, siblings, friends. Photos of the deceased are common and will rack up dozens of supportive comments, as well as reactions in emoji form. A round yellow face holding a red heart – the “care emoji” – proliferates.
According to WikiHow, this was designed as “a virtual hug to show support or compassion”. Posts of a more general nature appear often, too. A user might superimpose words such as “If you miss someone in heaven, say I do” on to an image of a cloudy sky, and others will interact accordingly. The members of these groups are (or at least appear to be) strangers to one another, often hailing from separate countries, or continents. They are united only virtually, by their loss, and their loneliness.
These groups are just one example of how our grieving rituals have changed in recent years. Death, just like life, has gone virtual. Irish mourning etiquette – keeping up to date with death notices via the local paper; sending mass cards to offer condolences; shaking the hands of the bereaved at funerals or removals – is slowly being eroded, as new manners, attitudes and behaviours take hold.
On TikTok, users log their grief journeys. There are photo montages which run through the hours, weeks, months, and years after a loved one has died. Tearful images and pictures of big happy/sad moments, such as graduating from college, are par for the course. Others prefer to post poems or quotes, accompanied by stock videos of waves and mournful music. There are grief counsellors who answer questions about bereavement in videos that act as indirect advertisements for their services. Some have religious – usually Christian – intent. One has a tagline that reads “helping prevent your next menty b”. Menty b is internet-speak for mental breakdown. The services offered by these counsellors might involve therapy, which takes place across the cyber connection of a Zoom call.
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Technology has become so intertwined with death that a word has spawned to describe the intersection between the two: thanatechnology. But what does it mean for these two realms to collide? Does death become trivialised when it goes online? Has the language we use to express grief become an emoji-coded tale, signifying nothing? Why send flowers when you can send a bouquet icon? Why confide in close friends when you can type your sorrows into an online forum? Why wait to share morbid news in person when, with the click of a mouse or the tap of a phone screen, you can reach the whole world?
Margaret O’Reilly-Carroll, a grief counsellor and accredited member of the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, says it’s important to ask not whether thanatechnology is “positive or negative”, but rather whether it is “helpful or not so helpful”. “I look at it in the context of [people] as individuals,” she says. “Grief raises huge issues for all of us in relation to how we mourn, how we grieve.”
Traditional grieving methods often act to underline the incontrovertible nature of death. The open caskets at Irish removals tell us in a visceral way that a person has died. In many cultures, mourning is a physical act: a mourner might wail, or prostrate themselves in front of a casket, expressing their loss bodily.
By contrast, the online world can make death seem abstract, or even undermine its very essence. On social media, the deceased and the living alike are disembodied ciphers. Death washes across the timeline and is swiped away. In the arena of artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have begun to develop grief bots, which use data from a person’s life to create an avatar of that person after they have gone. The bereaved can message their loved one and receive responses, as if they are still here.
There are some pros to these technologies, but I am wary of the way grief and death are commodified
— Dr Pragya Agarwal
For O’Reilly-Carroll, this raises alarm bells. “One of the first things we say about healthy grief work is that we understand the reality of it: that person is gone,” she says. She feels that developing these bots, and advertising them to people who have recently experienced loss, poses “huge ethical concern[s]”. “People are vulnerable when they’re grieving,” she says. “If I had someone coming to talk about engaging with [a grief bot], I’d be very careful. The last thing you want to do in therapy is be judgmental; however, I would raise those questions.”
There are larger philosophical quandaries to be reckoned with when it comes to grief bots and other similar technologies, too.
“It’s kind of giving a sense that we are in control of everything and there is no such thing as end of life,” observes O’Reilly-Carroll. She says that when we allow the virtual world to simulate eternal life, a cognitive dissonance can occur.
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“On the one hand you know the person is gone. But if you’re able to access a grief bot, then that’s giving a message that the person is still there, and you can communicate with them.”
Author and academic Dr Pragya Agarwal has written about the history of grieving and emotional expression in her book Hysterical, and more recently, has begun research into technologies around grief, including AI. One thing that concerns her is the “start-up-ification” of grief.
“Generally, there are some pros to these technologies, but I am wary of the way grief and death are commodified, or how this could erase some of the other rituals that help people process grief,” she says. She is cautious, for instance, of what it might mean for mourning rites to migrate into the online sphere.
“It makes me wonder how it can perhaps ‘casualise’ death, and we can become more desensitised to something that we don’t experience physically and viscerally. It feels like something that is happening elsewhere – away at a distance – and it can [create] an additional barrier in processing the death of a loved one.”
This distance is something Agarwal has experienced personally. In November 2020, her father died. His funeral was in India, but travel restrictions meant she could not attend in person. A live-stream was the closest she and her sister (who lives in California) could get to the ceremony. But it was a pale comparison to reality – especially since Hindu mourning processes involve 10 days of rituals that are designed to allow people space away from their everyday lives.
“They live-streamed some of the funeral, but it was too harrowing for me,” she says. “It made the sense of loss even more acute that I couldn’t be there and couldn’t see him one last time. […] I couldn’t really watch much of it. In some ways I regret it, but also, I haven’t been able to [look at] any photos or videos from it until now.”
O’Reilly-Carroll says it’s not uncommon for the grieving process to be delayed in cases where people suffered serious losses and had to attend funeral services virtually.
“They might come back home [from abroad] and everybody else has moved on. And they might go into a house, or a place, or a room where the individual was, and it’s as if it’s just happened.”
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However, there can be advantages to virtual technologies.
At Killure Bridge Nursing Home in Waterford, online attendance at funerals has become a regular occurrence, as many residents are high-dependency and unable to make the journey to the church or place of mourning. It’s not unusual for residents to access a service via tablet, device, or laptop. And if a resident of the nursing home dies, a gathering might take place in the dayroom, with the service shown on the smart TV.
The facility for families to put together a photo memory slideshow and have that played during the ceremony with music has become very popular
— Siobhán Walls, Humanist celebrant
“I think [live-streaming] does help with the grieving process,” says Mary Burke, the facility’s director of care. “There’s something about being at the funeral [virtually] and being involved. We had a lady here and her sister died up in Co Roscommon, so there was no way she was going to drive to Roscommon. But all of her children went, and they came back the next day and she was able to talk about the different parts of it: the reading, and the gifts. It helped with the grieving and the discussion about death.”
Other technologies, such as video calling, have facilitated connections between dying people and their loved ones.
“One time, a gentleman was passing away and his son was in Australia,” says Burke. “We Facetimed the end of life – his last breath. So, the family member in Australia was able to see him going.
“Recently, another relative was away and her mother was dying. We were able to let her say goodbye through a WhatsApp video call […] So, technology can bridge the divide when families are away.”
On the website of the Church of the Annunciation, Rathfarnham, the webcam section grants access to a variety of Masses, including funerals that have taken place in recent times. Clicking on any of these brings up a shot of the altar. At the bottom of the screen, part of the coffin, adorned with flowers, is visible. Songs, sermons and eulogies can be heard through microphones. The congregation is obscured, but those who stand at the lectern, or who bring gifts to the altar, can be seen. Were there a funeral on right now, it would be possible to join live, from home, or work, or bed, or just about anywhere in the world.
The moderator, Rev Martin Cosgrove, says while he believes being physically present is what makes the most impact on mourners, live-streaming is very helpful when that’s not possible.
“We have over 100 funerals each year, so that’s a lot of bereavement and grief for families,” he says. “We regularly welcome people from America, Australia, Britain – all over the world. We would normally get lists in advance from the family as to who they would like to be mentioned who are joining us online. […] We include them at the beginning, because we know it’s important for them. And also watching a funeral at a distance like that can, I’m sure, be a lonely experience.”
The recording of funerals lends permanence to something that once would have been ephemeral. Do priests like Cosgrove tailor their services to account for this?
“It doesn’t worry me that it’s being recorded,” Cosgrove says. “What I try to do at every funeral is to speak of the deceased whose funeral I’m conducting, and try to be as truthful as one can in those situations. There’s a lot of great people who die. But unfortunately, there are some who might not be in that same category, let’s say. We do our best to be fair to the deceased and supportive of their family. The morning of the funeral is probably more to do with the family than the deceased.”
Rev Adrian Dorrian, vicar in the Lecale Area Mission Partnership, has been live-streaming funerals for many years at Down Cathedral. The one challenge, as he sees it, is to maintain the spirit of the ceremony.
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“Funerals are acts of worship. And it’s important that we manage all services that we do on live-stream or in person as acts of worship first and foremost, and not in any sense performances, or staged. […] When you’re beginning to think of a congregation beyond those in the church, there’s a danger that the congregation can become an audience, and instead of an act of worship, there’s a performative element. I don’t think that happens cynically or because of people’s egos – I think it’s just human nature. So, one of the challenges for myself and my colleagues is to work to maintain the dignity of the office of a funeral service, for the sake of the family. […] But I want to be really clear: this is not a minister having a go at families wanting to personalise funerals. I think that’s a really important part of funeral ministry as well. And I’m happy to do that as far as is reasonable and realistic.”
For Humanist celebrant Siobhán Walls, online funerals have had a useful byproduct. “I have been involved the last few years in training new celebrants, and the live-stream was useful for that because I could say to trainees, I’m doing a funeral on Tuesday at 10 o’clock, and they could all tune in and watch.”
There are other digital aspects to the funerals Walls conducts, too. “The facility for families to put together a photo memory slide show and have that played during the ceremony with music has become very popular,” she says. “Typically, the family needs to bring the slide show or jpegs on a USB and then the crematorium staff can play it along with music.”
Felicity Nicholson lost her mother, Joy Guard, in April 2024, and opted to do one of these slide shows as part of the service. “It was easy enough to do – everyone contributed photos,” she says. “It was a lovely thing.You could feel that there were murmurs going around the room when they recognised that it was that holiday they had been on with mum, for example. And some of the photos brought light relief – some of them were funny. It certainly added to the atmosphere of the ceremony.”
Had Nicholson gone a step further, she might have preserved her mother’s memory using a graveside QR code. This is an aluminium plate containing a QR code, which is attached to the grave. Visitors can scan it for access to photos, videos or other documents about the life of the deceased. Companies such as thestoryof.io provide this digital legacy. But like many things associated with dying, it’s not cheap. Packages cost upwards of €350, again raising the question of high-tech commodification of grief.
QR codes were not on Nicholson’s radar at the time of her mother’s funeral, but the service was live-streamed, and afterwards she was given the option to purchase the recording. “I did inquire about how much it cost, and that put me off,” she says. (At Mount Jerome, a recording of the ceremony costs €50.) “If it had been free, I wonder would I have watched it back. But then I thought, well, it’s a bit morbid – why would you want to watch your mother’s funeral back?”
It may well seem morbid, but Rob Treolar of the videography service Absent Friends says watching services back is not an unusual thing for mourners to do.
“From analytics on the site […] If you’re to take a typical funeral and look at the views at the end of a service, and then the views a week later, there’s definitely an incremental increase.”
He posits that this might have to do with the shock felt at the time of the funeral – the bereaved may be unable to fully take in what’s being said.
“Particularly for [very] shocking or sad funerals; families are so beside themselves in the church, there’s no way they can hear all the lovely things that are being said about their loved one. So, I think when they’re in a better frame of mind, and listen back, that’s actually a nice thing for them to be able to do.”
Absent Friends offers a more high-spec experience than regular live-streams: there’s a multi-camera visual, professional audio, an engraved wooden USB with a HD recording, and more. Like the graveside QR codes, it comes at a price: the service costs €450 + VAT.
But while some technologies surrounding death may seem expensive, strange or uncanny, for the most part, death and technology have intersected in subtle ways. The new manners around death include sending sympathies via text message – an immediate, yet non-invasive, mode of contact. Online death-notice websites have become the norm when it comes to announcing someone’s passing, or learning about it. Posting and reading messages of condolence on these websites is common practice. Nicholson, who has experienced not only the loss of her mother of late, but also of a brother, uncle, aunt and a cousin, says these messages provided great comfort.
When it comes to bereavement support, technology isn’t always the best solution, but there are nonetheless helpful resources. Textaboutit.ie is a free anonymous text service that operates 24/7, helping mourners through moments of intense suffering. Grief Ireland is an online community that hosts Instagram Live chats and shares quotes and stories about loss. Its founder, Kathie Stritch, organises grief retreats, and hosts a podcast, Family Flowers Only. Other podcasts such as Shapes of Grief, by grief therapist Liz Gleeson, can also help to fill long lonely hours and provide auditory comfort when going through loss.
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Of course, adapting to new customs around death can be a minefield. On social media, wildly different interpretations of what’s acceptable abound. At times, grief becomes performative, as seen when a famous person passes and our timelines clog with posts whose tones range from pious to manic. Questions around what’s appropriate can be hard to answer. Should you reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in years, because they’ve just announced a bereavement on your feed? How close do you need to be to the deceased to share photos and declarations of sorrow?
In a country with such established traditions relating to death, accepting new technological norms can feel illogical. But without technology, stories like that of Mary Regan might not exist.
Regan died in November 2024. She was predeceased by her partner and siblings. The only people who might have attended her funeral were distant relatives, who lived too far away to make the journey. But local funeral director Rory Healy took to the Carlow Death Notices Facebook page. He appealed to the online crowd not to let her be sent off alone. The internet answered.
On a Tuesday in December, the funeral Mass for the 89-year-old, with no surviving family, was held in the parish of Askea. Hundreds and hundreds of people came.
