Cann - Introduction To Virtual Afterlives

University Press of Kentucky
Chapter Title: Introduction
Book Title: Virtual Afterlives

Book Subtitle: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century
Book Author(s): Candi K. Cann
Published by: University Press of Kentucky. (2014)
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Introduction
American Grief: A Brief Historical Background
The face of grieving in American culture has changed dramatically in

the last two hundred years. Traditionally, there were established
grieving rituals that one followed after a death—mourning was a
liminal state in which one withdrew from society and could grieve
the dead, and then return to social norms and expectations. Evidence
of such mourning rituals was fairly universal and included the wear-
ing of mourning clothing and observing a certain period of enforced
bereavement, during which one was both expected and permitted to
take time off from traditional social events such as dinners, dances,
and so on. One would also take time from one’s occupational duties,
after which one would generally reenter the world and participate in
everyday social and work activities, commemorating the anniversary
of the death on a regular basis. These traditional grieving rituals oc-
curred during a time when people themselves were still in charge of
most of the aspects of both dying and death, giving care to those dy-
ing in the home; washing, dressing, and preparing the body for the
funeral following the death; and then disposing of the dead in the
local cemetery or churchyard.
Over the last couple of hundred years, however, grief in the Unit-
ed States and the ways in which it is observed have drastically
changed; several major events accompanied this transition of grief
and mourning: the Industrial Revolution, the American Civil War,
and advances in health care and medicine. The Industrial Revolution
helped lead to the compartmentalization of work, so that it was no
longer tenable to care for the dying and the dead. Workers labored
long hours, and it wasn’t practical to keep bodies in the home in large
cities, where sanitary conditions were minimal and largely dependent
on one’s neighbors. Having dead bodies in such close quarters was
not viewed as a practical or desirable situation and was socially
2 Virtual Afterlives
frowned on. The fragmentation or specialization of work occurred

simultaneously with the development of death specialists, embalmers
and funeral home directors, who contributed to the notion that bod-
ies should be disposed of in a particular way. With the Industrial
Revolution, it was not only jobs that became compartmentalized;
death itself was removed from the realm of the living, as the manage-
ment of death shifted away from the home to the funeral industry.
Contributing to this trend were the medical and health industries,
which moved dying from the home to the hospital. Ironically, medical
advances accompanied the trend of shifting dying and death away
from the realm of the living, and thus one could expect to end one’s
days in a hospital, where, upon death, the corpse would be trans-
ferred to the morgue and the funeral home.1 Both dying and death
were effectively taken out of church and home, leaving little or no
contact between the living and the dead.
The American Civil War contributed to this trend with its large
numbers of war dead, which created an impetus for finding a way to
preserve bodies until they were delivered to the family of the de-
ceased. Embalming thus became an expected and accepted part of
the death practices in the United States. Though embalming has been
practiced throughout history (in Egypt, for example, the mummifica-
tion of important personages was common), it has not always been
available to or expected for the masses, as it generally involved spe-
cialists and was not financially feasible for the average person. The
democratization of death and the rise of the middle class allowed ac-
cess to embalming practices that previously had been in the realm of
only the few, and with the inventions of both refrigeration and the
railroad—which resulted in refrigerated cars and the easy transport
of corpses—the embalming of corpses for return to the families of
the dead became an everyday reality. Embalming the body in the
United States today is the norm rather than the exception. 2
The Shroud and the Displacement of Death
Death and dying, with rare exceptions, have become compartmental-

ized from everyday life, and death and dying are a business. Along
with the displacement of the care of dead bodies, the bereavement
Introduction 3
service itself, in the form of the funeral, has also moved out of the
hands of the family and into the professional services of the funeral
home. Funeral home directors often employ the title of “Bereavement
Counselor” to describe one who is given the task of selling the family
the various accouterments of death: the casket, embalming services,
arrangement of the funeral or memorial service, and securing a rest-
ing place for the deceased. These “Bereavement Counselors” are in-
deed specialists in death, but they also walk a fine line between
counseling families in their loss and selling packages that might max-
imize the funeral home’s profit margins. This is a radical change from
the death experience just a couple of hundred years ago, when caring
for both the sick and dying and for the dead body itself was an ex-
pected part of one’s everyday experience, and one constructed the
casket oneself. Philippe Ariès traces this shift in attitudes about death
in his book The Hour of Our Death, tracing the social construction
of death from its previous place as a communal experience to the
more individualized understanding of death as we see it today. Ac-
cording to Ariès, inscriptions on tombstones (which are becoming
less popular as land becomes scarcer) and the proliferation of wills
are indicative of the social importance of the individual and the de-
cline of the community, influencing the ways in which we perceive
and understand death.3 Additionally, definitions of death itself have
shifted since the 1950s and 1960s, and the emergence of new technol-
ogy—defibrillators and respirators—has shifted the understanding of
death from cardiopulmonary death to those of whole-brain and par-
tial-brain death. Death, and its definition, is not only a social con-
struction, but culturally determined, and the American understanding
of death—like the corpse—is clean, sterile, sanitized, and based on a
profound sense of the importance of the individual.4 The image today
for a dead body is not the corpse—but the shroud—the ugliness of
death covered, and hidden away, if not cosmetically covered over.
Bereavement Leave: A Global Examination
Grief similarly has shifted from the everyday realm and no longer has
a place in our society. In fact, grief has become marginalized by both
society and the workplace, as bereavement policies are no longer the
norm but the exception. Though the United States has a federal Fam-
ily Medical Leave Act (FMLA), beyond this there is no official fed-
eral- or state-driven bereavement policy. Employers and society both
expect the bereaved to return to work in a short time, and most
American employees today are given only a maximum of three days
off to make funeral arrangements and mourn. This decrease in be-
reavement leave has occurred in nearly direct correlation with the
decline in traditional observances of mourning. To illustrate this
point, a brief review of benefits and bereavement policies around the
world reveals that among the most industrialized societies, the Unit-
ed States and the United Kingdom have no national bereavement
laws; bereavement policies are enforced at the corporate or the local
level. These leave policies generally allow anywhere from one to three
days of paid leave;5 further leave, if granted, is unpaid, though one
can usually take sick leave or personal leave in addition to bereave-
ment leave if one wishes to do so. Also, bereavement is generally de-
fined for a very small group of mourners, identified as the “immediate
family,” consisting of parent, child and spouse. Grandparents, sib-
lings, cousins, domestic partners, extended family, and friends are
often not included in American and British policies on bereavement.6
In contrast, in Europe (particularly in those countries with more
socially minded governments) workplaces generally offer a generous
bereavement leave of anywhere from five days to four weeks, and
many policies benefit and recognize same-sex marriages.7 Bereave-
ment policies in these countries are federally mandated and imple-
mented at the company level. In Asia and Latin America one also
finds federally mandated bereavement leave. In China national laws
mandate a minimum of three to five paid days of bereavement leave,
and additional leave is granted for travel if necessary, with the stipu-
lation that the person must cover the cost of his or her own travel.8
The Japanese government grants people ten days of paid bereavement
leave for immediate family members and five days for extended fam-
ily members, but most people take two or three times this amount to
mourn and put family affairs in order.9 In Chile federal bereavement
leave grants seven days of paid leave for a spouse or a child, and three
days for a parent, parent-in-law, or unborn child, and additional
leave is granted if requested, but the minimum is guaranteed by the
Introduction 5
federal government.10 In Colombia, federal law dictates that, no mat-

ter what type of employment, workers be given at least five paid days
of leave for a spouse or “permanent companion” and any family
member up to the second degree of blood kinship (in other words,
parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and first cousins) and
adopted members in the immediate family.11 Thus, one views the dif-
ferences in bereavement between the United States and other parts of
the world: not only is bereavement not granted or protected by the
American government, but the recipients of bereavement leave are of-
ten limited to immediate family and narrowly defined understand-
ings of “family.”
American Grief Revisited: Bereavement Policies Today
A brief examination of American bereavement policies in both the

American government and private sector bears this out. Companies
are not required to give bereavement leave and may demand that em-
ployees provide documentation of the death (a copy of either the
death certificate or the obituary), or take any time off out of their
personal and sick leave (or both). The usual amount of time granted,
if it is granted, is three days, and this is extended only for immediate
family: a parent, spouse, or a child. Grandparents, aunts, uncles,
cousins, domestic partners, and so on, are not usually included in
bereavement leave, although sometimes a workplace may grant time
off for attending the funeral itself. The U.S. government generally
grants its employees three days of bereavement leave for combat-re-
lated death for immediate family; employees are then able to use their
personal and sick leave (up to thirteen days) for any additional days.
If a family member dies from natural causes, employees use their sick
days to cover their bereavement needs. Interestingly, the government’s
definition of family members is much wider than most policies in the
private sector and includes the following: “spouse; parents; parents-
in-law; children; brothers; sisters; grandparents; grandchildren; step
parents; step children; foster parents; foster children; guardianship
relationships; same sex and opposite sex domestic partners; and
spouses or domestic partners of the aforementioned, as applicable.”12
In short, though little time is given to cover the needs for bereave-
ment, the American government does grant bereavement leave to gov-

ernment employees for a wide definition of family, including domestic
partners and extended family. Having no federal bereavement policy
in the United States, and leaving it to individual companies to dictate,
problematizes the notion of grieving, as there is no unified approach
to bereavement, and companies can give priority to their profit mar-
gins over the well-being of their employees. It is no wonder, then, that
in the United States grief has become so marginalized.
A brief survey of some companies across the United States reveals
fairly standard bereavement leave policies. The general standard for
full-time, non-exempt (salaried) employees is three days of bereave-
ment leave. Hourly employees are often given only enough time off to
attend the service or funeral, or they are simply told they must take
unpaid time. The divide between the middle class and working poor
becomes most evident in death—the working poor are given even less
time to grieve than those who are salaried. While death comes equal-
ly to all, mourning does not. Most companies require documentation
of not only the death, but also the relationship to the deceased, and,
again, family is defined: bereavement policies dictate not only how
long one mourns, but also who should be mourned. It would be im-
possible to give a list of all the various bereavement policies in the
private sector, but I include here a few representative examples. Be-
cause companies are free to dictate their own bereavement policy,
and there is no federally mandated law regarding bereavement,
mourning is not protected, and employees are generally expected to
negotiate their bereavement time on an individual basis with their
employers. Additionally, many companies don’t make their bereave-
ment policies public knowledge, which makes access to and analysis
of such policies difficult.
I illustrate the private sector’s bereavement policy by giving two
examples—one from Disney, considered to be a family-friendly com-
pany, and the other from AOL, chosen because it is one of the com-
panies that has led the way in flextime and use of more
family-friendly work schedules. I chose these companies because they
are by far the most generous in their bereavement leave policies of
companies in the private sector, yet even these companies do not
come close to bereavement policies instituted in other countries with
Introduction 7
federally mandated guidelines in place. I will end with a brief com-

parison to Walmart—one of the largest employers in the United
States, and a company with one of the poorest (yet more typical) be-
reavement policies in the private sector.
Disney, believed to be a generous company to work for, leads
the way in private-sector policies regarding bereavement; it grants
five days per event for regular employees for the following relation-
ships between the deceased and the bereaved: “The deceased must
be a spouse, qualified same-sex domestic partner, child, stepchild,
grandchild, parent, parent-in-law, grandparent, or sibling of the
employee. If an employee was especially close to or had responsibil-
ity for a relative other than these, bereavement leave may be grant-
ed by the head of Human Resources or a designated Human
Resources representative.”13 Disney’s leave policy of five days for
regular employees is somewhat generous, and a broad range of re-
lationships is addressed in its benefits handbook, including same-
sex partners and siblings, and it allows for extra time given at the
discretion of the Human Resources Department. According to Dis-
ney’s employee handbook: “Payment is available only for scheduled
work shifts which employees miss due to arrangement of, travel
time to, and attendance at funeral services. Requests for bereave-
ment leave must be made to and approved by the employee’s imme-
diate supervisor. The employee’s relationship to the deceased and,
upon request, the location and date of the funeral, must be provid-
ed in the request for bereavement leave.”14 This means that the time
(up to five days in Disney’s case) is applicable only for covering the
actual time needed to make funeral arrangements, attend the fu-
neral, and travel to and from the funeral. The “bereavement leave,”
like those of most companies in the United States, would be more
aptly described as funeral attendance leave, as it covers only the
shifts that interfere with the funeral. Additionally, employees are
required, as they are in most companies, to provide documentation
of the location of the funeral so that their supervisors may ascer-
tain whether the bereavement leave request is reasonable. Disney
provides its hourly employees bereavement leave at the rate of the
scheduled shift, plus any additional pay that might have accrued.
Disney’s handbook states, “Payment for bereavement leave will be
made at the base wage or salary rate in effect at the time of the
leave. Shift premium and lead pay will be included in the computa-
tion of bereavement leave when applicable.”15 Thus, while employ-
ees are given time only to attend the funeral, rather than to
actually grieve, Disney is notable in its reimbursement to hourly
employees for shifts missed.
America Online’s (AOL) bereavement policy is representative of
the standard corporate bereavement policy. Though its leave time for
salaried employees is more typical than Disney’s, at three days rather
than five, AOL equals the playing field for salaried and hourly em-
ployees, giving them each three days off:
Bereavement Leave
AOL provides non-exempt (hourly) employees with up to 24 hours
of bereavement leave and exempt employees with up to 3 days
bereavement leave due to the death of an immediate family
member. Bereavement leave is granted at the Company’s sole
discretion.
Eligibility for Bereavement Leave

The following employment classifications are eligible for
bereavement leave:
Full-time employee
Part-time employee
Procedure for Requesting Bereavement Leave:

Notify your manager as soon as possible of the need to take
bereavement leave. You may be required to provide appropriate
documentation as proof of your relationship to the deceased
person.
AOL recognizes the following as immediate family
members: Mother/Father Step-Mother/Step-Father Step-Sister/
Step-Brother Sister/Brother Spouse/Qualified Domestic
Partner Your Child, Step-Child, or Domestic Partner’s
child. Grandchild Grandmother/Grandfather Mother-in-Law/
Father-in-Law Sister-in-Law/Brother-in-Law Anyone who acted in
a parental capacity or role when you were a child.
Introduction 9
Bereavement Leave Policy

For non-exempt employees, you will be paid bereavement leave
at 100% of your base rate of pay, based on the number of hours
you are normally scheduled to work per week. For exempt
employees, bereavement leave is paid at 100% of your base rate
of pay at the time leave is taken. Paid bereavement leave is not
considered in calculating overtime and does not include any
special forms of compensation such as shift differential,
incentives, commissions or bonuses. Non-exempt employees
must report all bereavement leave taken on their timesheet for
each payroll period. If you need additional time off after
exhausting bereavement leave, you may request to take vacation
or an unpaid personal leave of absence.16
AOL’s bereavement leave is standard in the private sector and is actu-

ally far more generous in its definition of family than most compa-
nies: bereavement leave is granted here to those in mourning for their
extended family and those who acted in a parental capacity, which
includes such people as godparents and other unrelated significant
persons. Grandparents and in-laws are also included here, which is
highly unusual.
In contrast, Walmart’s definition of family includes only the
parents, children, and spouse, and paid bereavement leave is given
only for these three categories of family. Anyone mourning some-
one outside this narrow definition of family (such as an uncle or a
grandparent) may receive time off to attend the funeral, but the
leave is unpaid. This can be an unnecessary hardship for hourly
employees who depend on shift work for their pay. Additionally, to
receive paid bereavement leave, employees must bring a copy of the
death certificate or the obituary to their supervisor, proving that
the death has occurred.17 Like Disney and AOL, requiring the di-
rect supervisor’s approval for bereavement leave (as opposed to
that of a human resources representative or, as in other countries,
the federal government) often means that bereavement leave ap-
proval is subject to individual decision, rather than being a guaran-
teed right.
This brief study of various bereavement policies from the Ameri-
can government and the private sector is by no means comprehensive,

but it does nonetheless reveal the range and variability of bereave-
ment policies across the United States. The danger in this variability
is that there are no shared societal expectations regarding bereave-
ment. Bereavement leave would be more accurately titled Disposal
Leave, as there is no time given to mourn and grieve the dead, only to
dispose of them. Grief, then, is not only marginalized but highly in-
dividualized and dependent on many factors: one’s status in society
(whether one is a salaried or hourly employee), one’s relationship with
the bereaved, and one’s relationship with one’s supervisor all deter-
mine how one grieves, how long one is given to grieve (hours or days),
and, ultimately, one’s own individual resourcefulness for channeling
that grief so that one can return to work as a productive employee.
This is an enormous shift from just one hundred years ago, when
grief was acceptable and a natural part of life, and death was seen as
part of everyday experience.
Not having a federally mandated bereavement leave means not
only that bereavement is not guaranteed or protected, but also that
there is no socially accepted understanding of grief. Space, in the
form of time, for grieving, is not given, and, as a result, grieving it-
self is highly marginalized, as workers are told how long and for
whom they can and should grieve. Anyone grieving outside the man-
dated parameters has no time, space, or place in which to grieve.
Even for officially sanctioned grief, however, three days is not enough
time to dispose of the dead and mourn them. Three days is not
enough time to meet with the coroners, plan a service, write an obit-
uary, purchase the casket or the urn, embalm or cremate the body,
buy a plot or a niche, hold the service, bury the dead, and then pro-
cess and mourn the death. And this is even truer for those who do
not meet the constraints of bereavement leave—domestic partners,
for example—who are not granted any time from work to make all
these final arrangements. Mourning is not only undesired in the
workplace; it is undesired in American society. Death, a universal
experience, and the mourning that helps us come to terms with our
own fragility in life, has been pushed to the side in the social realm
as well, as grief is now deemed a symptom of depression if it extends
beyond two weeks.
Introduction 11
American Grief or Mental Illness?
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has pathologized grief so

that it is no longer a meaningful or helpful part of everyday existence.
In May 2013 the APA published its latest revision of its text, the fifth
edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM 5), which categorizes the various forms of mental illness.18 This
text is considered the gold standard of psychiatry and is, in part, used
by insurance companies to determine what will and will not be cov-
ered under their insurance policies, and it is therefore updated every
few years. One of the major changes between the DSM 4 and the
DSM 5 was in the area of grief and bereavement. In the DSM 4 Major
Depressive Disorder (MDD) could be diagnosed after two weeks of
impaired functioning, but there was a bereavement exclusion, which
essentially meant that those who were grieving the death or loss of a
loved one were not considered to be clinically depressed because they
were actually undergoing the bereavement process. According to the
DSM 5, this exclusion no longer holds, and depression, even as a result
or a part of grief, is considered to be an MDD if it extends beyond two
weeks. While some herald this reclassification as a positive change
because it allows for grief counseling to be reimbursed by insurance
providers, classifying bereavement as depression after two weeks fur-
thers the stigma of grief in our society and reveals how far we have
moved from a time when grief and mourning were not only accepted
but expected, and one who lost a family member could wear mourn-
ing clothing and abstain for a number of months, if not years, from
daily social, occupational, and societal expectations.19
Additionally, this reclassification of grief removes the structural
and social components of grief, through overfocusing on the individ-
ual and her or his experience of loss. When someone dies, not only is
that individual gone, but the entire social fabric surrounding that in-
dividual has becomes disrupted, and social bonds change and shift in
adjustment to the absence of the deceased. Categorizing grief as “nor-
mal,” “abnormal,” “extended,” “prolonged,” or simply stages to be
worked through and beyond does not recognize the complexity of the
disruption of death, nor does it take into account the immediate and
traumatic social disruption that occurs when an individual dies. One
does not simply lose the deceased, one also must relearn how to nav-
igate and reinterpret one’s social moorings and relationships without
the dead. It is not only the person who dies, but the memories and the
complex social relationships moored in that person that one loses
through death.20 In contemporary American society, this can be com-
plex. With blended families, the loss of the primary biological parent
does not merely serve to disrupt relationships, but, in extreme situa-
tions, can cause the severance of relationships and the loss of “home.”
To speak of grief in such simplistic terms as “stages to be moved
through” does not do justice to the dramatic shifts that sometimes
occur in the landscape of loss, nor does it take into account the com-
plex social web of relationships that are affected by that loss. Glenys
Caswell writes, “Although we might consider our memories to be pri-
vate, there is an element of memory that is social and shared. . . .
Some of a person’s earliest and most intense memories come from the
shared experiences of being in a family, and it is a well known phe-
nomenon that memory can appear to change over time, and these are
both aspects of memory that may be of significance in the funeral
context.”21 Focusing on the individual experience of grief as stages to
be moved through and beyond, as opposed to unpacking the social
morass of bereavement, marginalizes grief further and prevents a
true communitas of shared mourning.
Popular Memorialization: Grassroots Expression

of Grief
Without the public acknowledgment or acceptance of mourning,
grief is being pushed into the private realm, and as a result, new
grieving traditions are emerging at the grassroots-popular-private
level that are then introduced into the public sphere. Examples of
some of these emerging bereavement traditions are bodiless memori-
als, tattoo memorials, car-decal memorials, T-shirt memorials, and
Internet and social network memorials. People need not only to
grieve, but also to be publicly recognized as bereaved, and these prac-
tices allow them to do that. As martyrs and martyr narratives have
brought meaning to the deaths of those who have died and to those
who are left behind, the bereavement practices emerging in the popu-
Introduction 13
lar sphere reveal new ways of bringing meaning to the understanding

of death. And just as martyr narratives often tell as much about the
people championing a particular martyr, bereavement practices are
often just as much about the grievers (if not more) than about the
deceased themselves. Bereavement practices reveal an organic expres-
sion of the desire to be publicly identified as a griever. The liminal
period of grief should be seen as part of the process of living. In the
United States it is the denial of death and the refusal to allow grief in
our daily lives that has contributed to the pathologization of grief. To
examine this trend, it is important to examine the United States in a
comparative lens, questioning whether this trend is a global one or
whether it is unique to America.
In this book I will examine various forms of emerging popular
memorialization, from the spontaneous memorials at the sites of the
recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania,
and Newtown, Connecticut, to the more personal expressions of
mourning found in tattoos, car-decal memorials, T-shirts, and on the
Internet. Situating this study as a comparative exercise allows us to
see the particular influences on popular bereavement, and, I believe,
also provides a notion of why and how these particular forms of be-
reavement are emerging. All forms of alternative memorialization
are emerging because of, and concurrent with, the disenfranchise-
ment of mourning. Bereavement is no longer given public space in
society or culture, which forces people to create and adopt alternative
forms of mourning to help them navigate public space with their al-
tered status as grieving individuals. These alternatives are all popular
forms of new grieving rituals, which allow the bereaved to grieve
while remaining functional in a world without mourning. J. R. Aver-
ill and E. P. Nunley assert in their Handbook of Bereavement that
“because of their importance, mourning practices are not simply
quaint customs that can be ignored at will. On the contrary, they are
duties imposed by the group,” usually within established political
and religious systems, which are those parts of society responsible for
“collective decision making” and “meaning and value articulation.”22
Because of the marginalization of the discourse of grieving, and the
disappearance of death, 23 mourners are forced to create new and
original forms of mourning rituals, and, in turn, some of these, such
as Internet memorials, are developing their own rituals, which are re-
placing old religious rituals in providing meaning and explaining
death. Jennifer Clark and Majella Franzmann write, in agreement
with C. A. Haney, C. Leimer, and J. Lowery, 24 that “the presence of
spontaneous memorials, of which roadside memorials form a subset,
indicated a desire to reconstruct new forms of ritualized mourning
because traditional mourning practices were old fashioned, inade-
quate and perhaps even irrelevant to modern Americans.”25 Private
memorialization is thus now entering the public sphere and re-creat-
ing bereavement rituals that were previously socially sanctioned and
universally recognized. Spontaneous memorials are in some ways a
spectacle of grief, in the same way that violence and sex have become
commodified and made spectacle. Grief must be acknowledged, and
the emergence of popular memorialization is evidence of that.
A Chapter Outline of Virtual Afterlives
In this book I examine four primary categories of popular memorial-

ization, in an order that reflects the gradually disappearing body,
from material memorials at the site of a death to the Internet or social
network memorial, in which the body has completely disappeared
and is replaced by only a virtual remembrance. These four categories
are (1) Bodiless memorials (2) Tattoo memorials, (3) Car-decal and
T-shirt memorials, and (4) Internet and social network memorials.
The subject of the first chapter is bodiless memorials, which usually
memorialize the site of death, rather than the body, and reflect cur-
rent society’s denial of the corpse, displacing the dead body and tem-
porarily transforming public space into a bereavement space. These
spaces, however, are becoming smaller in both geography and time,
as public memorialization either must be appropriated by the public
arena or forced back into the private realm. For example, the sponta-
neous memorial that emerged at the site of the shootings in Aurora,
Colorado, was allowed to remain for two months, and then the city
government removed it and is keeping the many items in the city ar-
chives for a future public memorial. Popular memorialization in
Newtown, Connecticut, however, was removed after two weeks, as
officials felt that two weeks was enough time to grieve, and “return
Introduction 15
to normal.” Public space for grieving is appropriated at the popular

level, but the function of public space is in contention between those
who are grieving and those who want to “return to normal.” Addi-
tionally, time itself is appropriated and shifted according to compet-
ing notions of grief and what is “appropriate” and “inappropriate”
grief. I argue in this chapter that it is, in part, the disappearance of
the corpse that has led to these appropriations of both space and
time. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes, “I am not in space and time,
nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body com-
bines with them and includes them.”26 The disappearance of the body
precludes the shift in space and time. If the body is not present, then
where are we to conduct our grief work, except in space and time?
Chapter 2 investigates tattoo memorials, in which a deceased
person is remembered by being etched into the skin of the bereaved.
They are another form of mourning clothing, but tattoos are perma-
nent ways of marking grief and, in both virtual and literal ways, are
forms of carrying the dead with us in a world where death and the
corpse are denied. The body, though it has disappeared, is remapped
onto living flesh to become a symbol of mourning in a world where
mourning is denied. I also highlight the role of tattoo artists them-
selves in conducting grief work through the tattooing of the body,
and I discuss the popularity of the body as a canvas for not only mar-
ginalized grieving, but also marginalized death. One finds tattoos
mostly in honor of those whose deaths are not typically socially rec-
ognized in current parameters of grieving: friends, colleagues, in-
fants, or grandparents. Deaths that one cannot publically acknowledge
or discuss are generally found inscribed on bodies as personal trib-
utes or memorials.
Car-decal and T-shirt memorials, in which a memorial of the de-
ceased is placed on the windshield of a car or worn on a T-shirt and
serves temporarily as a memorialization of the deceased, are the sub-
ject of chapter 3. Like tattoos—but less permanent—car decals and
T-shirts allow grievers to claim status as bereaved so that grief work
may be done in a socially accepted way. Car-decal and T-shirt memo-
rials also allow the bereaved to make public their status as grievers,
and yet, after a time, because of the memorials’ temporary nature,
mourners can return to their nongrieving states. These decals and T-
shirts, like tattoos, are generally found among marginalized commu-

nities and are used by marginalized grievers—grievers who cannot
express their grief in other socially acceptable ways, either because
they are not “allowed” to grieve or because they are grieving for the
socially unacceptable dead (usually babies or young adults). Almost
all these memorials seem to have a virtual counterpart, and when
popular and public grieving is “over” (as in Newtown), grieving is
heavily present and prevalent in the virtual realm.
Internet memorials, including tombstone Internet links with vir-
tual memorials, funeral home memorials, grieving websites, and
spontaneous social network sites of a deceased person, the subject of
chapter 4, illustrate that the language of grief is both popular and
spontaneous. Internet grieving allows for marginal discourse to cir-
cumvent traditional modes of bereavement by reclaiming mourning
discourse and the ways we talk about and think about the dead. This
book moves from the displacement of the body in bodiless memorials
to the most disembodied state—the virtual memorial—revealing the
shift away not just from death, but from the dead body itself. It is the
most disembodied form of remembering, but as we have made death,
the dead body, and the grieving experience disappear from the public
sphere, the virtual realm ironically returns with the specter of death
to haunt us. The rise of shows such as The Walking Dead, Twilight,
Six Feet Under all return the dead to us through the spectacle of
death, and the virtual realm returns us to our mourning through me-
morialization—the dead body—presented through image and memo-
ry, without the messiness of the corpse. It is nearly the opposite of
what occurs in the religious realm with martyrs and saints and the
cult of relics. Martyrs and saints bring us closer to holiness and to
God through their bodies, and the narratives of their suffering; but
these memorials are ultimately popular attempts to bring back the
dead, marginalized as they are by our culture and our own history in
the understanding and treatment of the dead. Memorials function as
replacements for the body, since we cannot keep the body among us;
they must be reinscribed in public space, in material remembrance,
etched into our bodies, pasted on our cars, worn on our bodies, or
transfigured on our social-network sites. The dead will return to
haunt us if we do not acknowledge them.

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University Press of Kentucky

Chapter Title: Introduction

Book Title: Virtual Afterlives

American Grief: A Brief Historical Background

The face of grieving in American culture has changed dramatically in

frowned on. The fragmentation or specialization of work occurred

The Shroud and the Displacement of Death

Death and dying, with rare exceptions, have become compartmental-

Bereavement Leave: A Global Examination

federal government.10 In Colombia, federal law dictates that, no mat-

American Grief Revisited: Bereavement Policies Today

A brief examination of American bereavement policies in both the

ment, the American government does grant bereavement leave to gov-

federally mandated guidelines in place. I will end with a brief com-

Eligibility for Bereavement Leave

Procedure for Requesting Bereavement Leave:

Bereavement Leave Policy

AOL’s bereavement leave is standard in the private sector and is actu-

can government and the private sector is by no means comprehensive,

American Grief or Mental Illness?

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has pathologized grief so

Popular Memorialization: Grassroots Expression

lar sphere reveal new ways of bringing meaning to the understanding

A Chapter Outline of Virtual Afterlives

In this book I examine four primary categories of popular memorial-

to normal.” Public space for grieving is appropriated at the popular

shirts, like tattoos, are generally found among marginalized commu-

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