November 12, 2007

[size=14pt]Teens turning to their Web pages to mourn. [/size]
By Andrea Natekar
Tribune


[size=8pt] Mourners post on the MySpace page of Matthew Errico, a 20-year-old Scottsdale man who committed suicide because the pain from a three-year-old back injury had become too much.[/size]




A memory of a late-night drive to buy McFlurries at McDonald's. A sad song by Boyz II Men. Photographs of a boy, whose life was cut short. And then an image of the casket at his funeral. While the majority of teen social networking sites are full of more frivolous chatter - shopping, partying and school gossip - recent deaths in the East Valley have turned some personal Web pages into online memorials, providing a glimpse into the world of teenage grief.

When Dobson High School sophomore Raegan Pride, 16, was shot and killed outside a Mesa dance party earlier this fall, his friends turned to online communities to express their grief, anger and sorrow.

Within days, three different sites on the popular social networking site MySpace.com popped up. On one, 289 teens and young adults linked in.

On these and similar sites, young people post photos, videos, digital artwork, memories and messages. Some even add "Blingees," or photographs altered to include written words, and graphics ranging from sparkles to halos and heavenly clouds.

"I think this is just a contemporary version of what is an ancient tradition - that is, ritualizing of the dead," said Joanne Cacciatore, a faculty associate at Arizona State University who researches death and grieving.

It's a desire that cuts across time and culture, she said, witnessed everywhere from ancient Neanderthal burial sites to ancestor worship in some Asian cultures.

"In Australia, they're not doing online memorial Web sites and, conversely, we're not laying the bones of our deceased out in trees to dry, but these are both ways for people to ritualize their dead," she said.

High-tech rituals
While a decade ago, teens mourned the loss of their friends by writing on their shoes, decorating their notebooks or lockers, now, it's become more sophisticated, Cacciatore said.

"Technology is changing a lot of the way we ritualize," she said.

Kristin Garcia, 17, of Chandler, made her personal Myspace page a tribute to Pride, who she said was like a "big brother," to her.

"He was an amazing person that meant a lot to me, and I want his memory to be kept alive, because I know that if it were me, he would do the same," Garcia told the Tribune.

She's also left messages for Pride on other Web sites.

"You deserved a long life and to have a family and become a professional football player. ... I don't think I will ever stop crying for you, I miss you so much, you know my mom is going to miss making your tamales that you love so much," she wrote on one.

Counselors say such heartfelt messages are common.

"With these e-mails and blogs, it's really raw emotions and raw material going out there, which can be good or bad," said Shea Stanfield, a counselor at Scottsdale's Desert Canyon Middle School. "In the grief situation, it's probably good because people say things to the family I think they might not say in a more guarded situation. So it really gets down to the core of getting in touch with your feelings."

Mary Kay Keller, a counselor at Tempe's Connolly Middle School, said the immediacy of online posting is attractive to teens.

"They want that satisfaction now. There's that feeling of immediacy. They share their concerns and feelings," she said. In addition, she said the more anonymous nature of the Web helps some teens - especially males, who can feel societal pressure to keep their emotions quiet - to get their feelings out in the open.

A continued connection
Cacciatore said the view that people must sever all bonds with the deceased in order to move on with their lives has fallen out of popularity. Instead, she said, American culture has increasingly adopted the view that people maintain ongoing bonds with the deceased.

That attitude is seen in the page of Danny Pasanella, a junior at Chandler's Valley Christian High School who died in September. His friends used Pasanella's own site to post messages of grief. Some ask him to watch over them.

"You were in my dream the other night and it made me so happy," posted one girl several weeks after his death.

Attesting to the popularity of MySpace tributes, a Web site, mydeathspace.com, allows users to submit a person's obituary along with a link to his or her MySpace profile.

Parents and other adult family members are creating their own online tributes to their children, too. Jackie Hartman of Gilbert was 19 when she disappeared Jan. 28.

A friend of the Hartman family set up the Web site www.findingjackiehartman.blogspot.com to get out the word about her disappearance and seek clues, said her father, David Hartman, during a recent interview.

Authorities later found her body in the desert east of Fountain Hills and determined she was shot to death.

Hartman said the purpose of the Web site changed to a place where visitors could leave condolences and follow the court case of Jonathan Ian Burns, arrested in her slaying.

Hartman said he visits the Web site daily to view comments and remember his daughter and the large number of volunteers who spent days looking for her.

"I think it's amazing the way people write and the way they just ... it's amazing the feelings you get from people," he said. "People just seem to say the right things all the time. It is just a great feeling and I encourage it."

A Glimpse of immortality
That free expression can be healthy, Stanfield said, because in general, Americans do not deal with grief well.

"We don't talk about it, we just tell people to get over it. We don't have a lot of really good support, as a culture, around that issue," she said.

While counselors were generally enthusiastic about the online tributes, Stanfield did note one possible downside: "It's a great excuse not to actually get in the car or go there face to face in a grief situation, which isn't always healthy."

Still, Cacciatore said that coping with loss - online or in person - is particularly difficult for young people.

"It's tragic because it's a glimpse into immortality for teenagers, when they wouldn't normally be getting the experience," she said.

Those thoughts are clearly expressed by teens' postings on MySpace memorials like that of Paige Smith, 16, a Mesa student who died in a car crash in January.

One of her friends posted: "You helped me realize that there is so much to live for, so much to do, and so little time in which to achieve... each moment to be filled with the enthusiasm of simply being alive. I miss you."
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