How to Grieve for Online Friends You Had Never Met in Person

First World problem. Its like mourning an author you never met but whose works you loved. Or a sports star you admired but never met in person. Save the sadness. Grieve for those you know and love. Not for imaginary friends The rest is trite.

One of my closest friends died suddenly last year. I cannot properly express in words the pain I've felt. Our friendship began in 1995 in a chatroom. We were both 13. We never met in person. It was always something we were hoping to do eventually, but we both lived busy lives in different states and it just never happened. When I told people about his passing, there were people who dismissed my grief. It baffles me... 22 years of friendship invalidated because we never shared the same physical space? These people do not know the meaning of friendship.

Online friends can sometimes be closer than "IRL" friends because the pseudo-anonymity and asynchronous nature means that people often share more online than they would in person, and communities are available 24-7, which even the best friend cannot be. I've been part of online communities that exposed me to a much wider range of opinions and life experience than I could have known in my own real-life circle. The people I knew online made me a better, more open-minded, person in real life. Online friends can also offer real life support, just as "meat space" friends can. When my 8 year old son was gravely ill (he recovered) that online community lifted me up. They materially supported my family, sending him gifts and arranging for a book of photos of their children wishing him a happy birthday. The result is that, when one loses an online friend, they may be losing a more intimate, fuller, less guarded version of the person than if they had known that same individual in real life. They may also have shared more of themselves with the person who has died, and those parts of themselves that they shared are now... gone.

I have followed a food blog for a number of years and when the lovely young woman who runs the site became pregnant I was so excited for her and delighted in her posts about her pregnancy. When her baby was born prematurely and died within a day I was shocked by how devastated I was. She is an incredible writer and wrote extensively and eloquently about her loss, and it was a gift. Her experience completely changed how I react to pregnancy and loss, I feel like I have someone in my life who experienced the terrible loss of a child, and yet I only know her from a blog! When I read she was pregnant again I was full of joy and fear, emotions that before this experience, I would never have thought possible from knowing someone through an online venue. When I read that she had delivered a healthy baby girl I burst into tears of joy and relief, true feelings for a true friend.

When A.I. and machine learning rise to the level of being able to replicate human emotion and narrative, will online relationships with bots be the same as an online relationship with a person? When that happens, unltimately aren't we just creating relationship in our own minds? At that point, there is no need to have any other human involved, is there? I fear that is the future.

I had a terrific connection with a journalist some years ago. He interviewed me for an article he was writing and we had several very deep and personal phone calls. I promised I would call him after I facilitated a workshop on the subject of the article. About a year later, he died very suddenly and tragically. When I heard about it on NPR, I had to sit down. I was stunned. I was so sad for quite some time. I kept berating myself for not calling him regarding the workshop. I had been meaning to. He was such a dear person and I had had such lovely conversations with him. I couldn’t believe I couldn’t just pick up the phone and talk to him. Sometimes intimacy can be formed quickly and people can experience deep attachments without meeting face to face. I still think fondly about this man. Such a wonderful guy with such a good heart.

Equating remote, non-personal connection with others to actually spending time together is an illusion that has existed since the invention of the telephone. "The Emperor's New Clothes" describes a paradise that a larger fraction of humanity is now enabled to enter. According to this article, 70 percent of Americans have entered. What would this sort of "friend" be able to do for those who used to live in Paradise? Would they be willing to actually make telephone connection, or go to visit?

I've had the good fortune of running an online discussion board for the past 18 years. Over that time we've lost three members, two of them significant contributors, and one of those two an administrator. We grieve together just like a family, and if possible we reach out to their families and tell them how important they were to us.

What's also unusual about death and the internet is that after someone passes their online accounts and profiles still exist. Does this ever get sorted out or expire? Are email accounts forever? Does Facebook ever erase you? Or is it an infinite, cyber black hole?

I've lost several on-line friends over the years who I met while researching genealogy. Two weeks ago, someone I've been corresponding with for 10+ years died suddenly. The grief is real, and it's really hard to find out the terrible news from Facebook, belately and with few details. I cried all day.

I’ve had an online friendship with someone for over 6 years. We’ve met in person only 5 times even though we live in the same city, but at one point we emailed a couple of times a week and had long back and forth conversations where I talked about deep spiritual and personal things. I tried to keep in touch but started to notice that if I didn’t reach out first they didn’t reach out at all. I also realized that I was more emotionally connected to them than they were to me and I have since curtailed my writing to once every couple of months just to say hello and wish them well. I still care deeply for this person but I couldn’t make them want to spend more time with me in real life so I had to let go and create distance for myself. It was hurtful, but I felt that the lack of face to face time and their lack of reaching out or responding at critical times, impacted how I was able to maintain my connection. We are complicated beings. We need to respect people’s limitations and different needs and live and let live.

I think the death of Anthony Burdain hit me especially hard. Watching all the final shows had me crying. He was like a “friend who I channeled” in foreign restaurants or in the USA to try dishes I had before never tasted nor been exposed. He broadened my horizons & he really shared how the world globally is filled with wonderful people to break bread & like no matter their skin color ethnicity nor religion. He looked at the world the way we brought up our kids. There is only ONE RACE -the human race! I know that I am not alone but he had a way of connecting as if we all knew & loved him. My heart is still broken!

I have long noticed, there are two kinds of people: * Those who "connect" and form relationships just as strongly online as they do in person; * Those who feel that only in-person relationships are "real." At one point, I had someone I considered to be my closest friend. We shared everything. We chatted all day long. We shared our person triumph and tragedies. We talked about our childhoods, the good, the bad. We talked about our aspirations. We shared our daily difficulties. We groused about our spouses. She fussed about her divorce. We talked about parenting. We helped each other in our careers. We sent each other videos, notes, funny memes, and jokes. In short, we were best friends, emotionally close, in every way that was meaningful. Then one day, she mentioned that she was best friends with a woman whom she had *just met,* and coupled it with a put down of our friendship. It hurt me. What did she mean? "Well, you know, you and I have never met and she and I have met in person. Of course, we're closer." Just like that, we were never friends again. She was not a friend. She had mistaken *proximity* for closeness. She had no idea what it meant to be a friend. When you talk about Disenfranchised Grief, you have to understand that there will always be people who do not *get* that some can truly connect with those they have never met in person. Others don't connect that way. They connect only in the real world... if at all.

A few years ago, I had an online friend from South Africa who died suddenly, and tragically, of some sort of intestinal ailment. We knew one another for almost a year from a massively multi-player online wargame, where we were members of the same Alliance. Her boyfriend was British. They had met in real life, but he lived in the UK. One moment, she was complaining that she had a stomach ache. The couple days later, her brother came onto her account and told her alliance: she was dead. I was the last person to speak with her. At the time, my alliance-family and the leadership of hers were at war, a titanic struggle for control of the Kingdom. Few knew the leader of her Alliance was stalking me, poisoning people socially. (Wargames are weird. It's WAR.) A mutual friend and I arranged a kingdom-wide truce and most of the live players in the kingdom moved their cities to where hers was located for 3 days. There were no attacks. Kingdom chat was filled with people sharing stories about her, her kindness, how friendly she was, how we'd miss her. We petitioned the Game Company for a "gold shield" (a perma-shield) but were ignored. In the weekend's subsequent inter-kingdom event; her city was zeroed; her hero executed. I mourned for months. No one noticed or cared. My family didn't comfort me. Only her brother mourned with me. Her boyfriend wouldn't speak to anyone, our alliances were enemies, after all. He quit the game. When I scroll past her picture, I remember her name.

I'm reminded of a memoir, "84 Charing Cross Road" by Helene Hanff, and a movie by the same name starring Anne Bancroft and other notable actors. The author, a single woman in NY, recounts a transAtlantic friendship with a bookdealer in London that lasted decades and took place wholly by mail. The story (true, not fiction) is sweet and sad. It's also uplifting to realize people who never meet face-to-face can have real, multi-layered relationships. If you can get a copy of the book or movie, it might help you understand your grief.

My husband and I used to travel quite a lot and I would post stories and "chat" on an online travel site. Everyone was mostly polite and nice and always full of advice. But as time went by, the snide remarks, the bitter responses got me down .. I feared I would begin to sound like them .. So I went cold turkey and no longer post on those sites or even read them. Thankfully, I am not a "chat room" sort of person, so it has been easy to not participate ..

I just celebrated 15 years with the love of my life, someone who I met online on a chat board for a well-known author. Except "met on a chat board" does not really capture the moment when things moved from friendship to the possibility of something else. That happened at was essentially an on-line wake for a beloved board member who had committed suicide. The board administrators were deeply aware of the pain people were feeling, and how we had young unhappy members that this would be a profoundly difficult time. The conversations that followed were deep and meaningful, and eventually passed on to our friend's sister so she could see that he had been a vital and loved part of the community. Online communities are real communities and leaders of them, formal and informal, are wise when they foster rituals that help us all deal with the lows and highs of life.

It plays out in real life. The articles you go to forward, tagging someone, texting a thought or observation...Takes a while to remember it’s over, the same as in real life.

The new journal on mortality issues, Months to Years, has two stories (pgs. 18 & 20) in their fall issue related to this topic that my students found very compelling. I recommend them for those interested in reading further on this new social borderline: https://www.monthstoyears.org

I have what we call "invisible friends" that I've know for as long as 20 years. Several have become in-person friends. Two of us were bridesmaids for another. When traveling, plans for get-togethers are often made. In our forums over the years, we've seen each other through so much "real life" -- new relationships, breakups, marriages, divorces, widowhood, caring for and losing parents and other family members, illnesses, fertility issues, pregnancies, stillbirths, adoptions, the challenges and rewards of raising children, moves across town and around the globe, sexuality and gender transitions, and career evolutions and changes. And there's also the everyday stuff of current events, popular culture, and day-to-day living that makes for more conversations. Over the years, there have been losses. One went from a diagnosis of liver cancer to death in less than a month. Others we have lost have been sudden, unexpected losses. More than one obituary has given a nod to their loved one's connection with their online community. We followed one friend's years-long battle with colon cancer before losing her. A bunch of us worked together online and somehow managed to reach the showrunners of her favorite show, and she got to see part of a pivotal episode before it aired because she'd be gone before the new season started. These losses were just as real, just as shared, as losses I've had in "real life."

An important feature of local vs remote comes through the comments: friendships in the physical world are typically embedded in a wider circle of friends and acquaintances. When a friend dies, news spreads quickly and members of the circle can considerate. A remote friendship is typically one-to-one in a world of its own, severed without notice leaving the survivor alone without pre-existing relations with other survivors.

I joined an online support group of women more than ten years ago when I was having a lot of trouble conceiving. After most of us finally had our babies (with medical assistance or via adoption), we moved our online chatting to a secret Facebook group and have been there for nearly a decade. Now we chat daily about our kids, our spouses, our aging or dying parents, our jobs, and just life in general. We laugh a lot, but we also cry. Several of us have met in person, but not everyone. Regardless of whether we have or have not, we care about one another very deeply. I don't necessarily feel closer to those I've met in person to those I haven't.

My ex-boyfriend passed away in a plane crash in August. Our relationship had become online only after I met my husband in 2007. My husband was not comfortable with me emailing or speaking with my ex. Over the years, I appreciated viewing my ex's social media posts, enjoying his vacations and his adult children's accomplishments, happy to see him doing well. My husband had very valid ongoing concerns that stopped me from reaching out to my ex, who was still single and lived nearby. My ex was planning to get married this fall. I thought we would reconnect once he was married, and now that day will never come. I have sent sympathy cards to his family and brief messages sharing fond memories of him, all to no acknowledgement or response. His memorial was held privately, with no public announcement. Although it was not possible for me to speak with my ex for many years, thanks to social media I could always check in on how he was doing and feel connected to him. Without being included in the shared grieving process for someone I loved so dearly, I am thankful to have so many supportive friends and family.

As a Millennial, it has never occurred to me that virtual, non-corporeal friendships can be any less powerful than in-person ones. I have a number of bedrock friendships whose primary currency is email and text. I share unreservedly my inner world with those people, and they with me. The rhythms and texture of such friendships is of course different to in-person interaction, but no two friendships are alike, wherever and however they play out. In-person communication can be just as imperfect and deceptive as email or text -- try being friends with someone who struggles to show emotion or honesty in-person! Maddening! In the safe space (open 24/7) that email and text creates, I find intimacy can be easier, laster longing and ultimately just as meaningful. Let's not knock it.

This happened to me, a woman who I became friends with on Facebook (we have the same breed of dog) and was friends with for 8 years passed suddenly from a stroke. Her family never deleted her account, and she pops up in comments in the Facebook "On this Day" feature. It's a bit eerie, but in general I like being reminded of her wit and warmth.

My father passed away recently and one of his unique characteristics was his gift for debate. He loved to get into lengthy, well researched debates with anyone, over anything. He would often do this in person but in more recent years as his health declined he began to do more of it online. Apparently he had enough of a connection with someone that not only did we get condolences through his social media sites but an anonymous gift of flowers was sent to his funeral from someone he was friends with through social media only. Even though these connections sometimes seem two dimensional, often they are much more than that. If people are being truthful about who they, a real friendship can develop and be long-standing and sometimes life-sustaining.

Having frequent comforting contact with someone can make the loss of that person profoundly painful. And it isn't only true of people. The most intense grief I have ever witnessed was that of a co-worker whose cat died. They had been together for years, since her childhood.

Thank you, it was very nice to see this article today. I've had the experience three times of an online friend dying. In one case we had corresponded by email for 15 years (we'd met on a film discussion message board). I knew everything about his life, down to intimate details and he knew mine. We never met in person or even spoke on the phone. At some point he contracted a serious bone marrow disease and gradually faded from our correspondence until one day I found his obituary online. Another guy I'd met, also on a film-related website, became a good friend and confidant for about 10 years, never meeting or speaking. He was killed in an accident last year and I'm still shocked about it. But in that case, the friend's sister had posted on his Facebook page about his death and it gave all his friends a place to express feelings about this terrific person. I found that to be the most helpful experience for this kind of friendship.

Thank you, it was very nice to see this article today. I've had the experience three times of an online friend dying. In one case we had corresponded by email for 15 years (we'd met on a film discussion message board). I knew everything about his life, down to intimate details and he knew mine. We never met in person or even spoke on the phone. At some point he contracted a serious bone marrow disease and gradually faded from our correspondence until one day I found his obituary online. Another guy I'd met, also on a film-related website, became a good friend and confidant for about 10 years. He was killed in an accident last year and I'm still shocked about it. But in that case, the friend's sister had posted on his Facebook page about his death and it gave all his friends a place to express feelings about this terrific person. I found that to be the most helpful experience for this kind of friendship.

A dear friend of of almost 50 years passed away 2 days ago. After she moved back to Canada 20 years ago, we kept in touch by phone and online. We would update each other with updates on our careers, gossip about friends, colleagues. We were both in the fashion industry, sharing similar lives as single career women, never married, no kids. In many ways she was my mirror. Since she has made a special place in my heart, I have not even begun to grieve, still stunned. I received a notice on FB from her niece about her passing. Online and gone, no further information. Can't even track the posting or my reply. This is a particularly brutal way to receive news or even to send news of someone's passing. We all deserve more than this.

“It is a strange and difficult thing to have felt so connected to someone you’ve never met.” This was written to me after the death of a friend, Ezra Caldwell, from a woman who had been following Ezra's progress throughout his illness. Ezra was diagnosed with recurrent (terminal) Stage IV metastatic cancer back in November of 2012 and died on May 24, 2014, after six years with cancer. I really feel this statement rings true for so many people who came to know Ezra through his blog Teaching Cancer to Cry where he documented his illness and much more. Or through his passion for bicycles (Fast Boy Cycles) and photography (Flickr). He indelibly affected so many people that never met him. From reading the comments posted on his blog, I can safely say that many felt like they knew Ezra on a deeply personal level. He was an inspiration to countless followers.

I met someone on a website for people with a mutual interest and we communicated daily for almost 10 years. She talked with me about her battle with cancer, the shocking and abrupt dissolution of her marriage and her attempts to rebuild her life over those years. We talked on the phone many times. Twice I missed meeting her in person for practical reasons. How I regret that. When she died from cancer at 54, after a decade long battle with her disease, I was devastated. Of course the loss is real. This is just how life is as technology changes how we live.

While I have many online friends, I also have customers who purchase from my online store. A good portion of them are returning customers. They have become like family and we chat back and forth each time an order comes in or if they have questions. I know about their families, their pets, their illnesses, their jobs. One of them lives in the CA Woolsey fire evacuation zone, and I haven’t been able to make contact. It’s terrifying to think they may be one of those who are lost or have died, or who have lost everything. I have been searching the Red Cross database but nothing yet. The only thing to do at this point is to donate and hope that she is okay. We don’t give enough consideration to how truly meaningful these online connections can be.

It does not even have to be people you actually interacted with. I followed two young YouTube vloggers who posted videos about their journeys with cancer. When Emily Hayward-Hasan https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa6sLJCWdaRF2yS-gd_NkeQ) died I was as gutted as if I knew her personally. This was a young woman who was able to connect to a camera as if drawing people into her space. Tens of thousands of others experienced this journey of grieving for someone they had never even met. The same happened with Dan Thomas (http://www.peeweetoms.com) who passed away a few months later. This is the kind of grief that feels silly even when it is experienced, but it is not unusual. Perhaps it is triggers for other losses we have had in our lives, but it is very, very real.

The "delusion" of modern/western technology is that we don't believe in ghosts or spirits. Primitive cultures and religious fanatics believe in ghosts as their way of describing forces they don't understand. Yet our relationship with the influence of people who have passed is almost identical to the primitive concept of ghosts. Robert Pirsig excellently articulated it in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" when he described that the words of Shakespeare and Lincoln resonate now just as much when those words were written. The words and thought of friends and relatives who have passed resonate now just as much as when they were alive. Those memories are our "ghosts." And the more we feel connected to someone who has passed, the more we feel the emptiness and vacuum in our lives from their passing. The greater the love and sense of connection, the greater the sense of loss. That includes someone who we physically have known AND someone to whom we only have been emotionally and intellectually connected. We need to deal with that loss by accepting it and grieving for it. But we also need to realize that by keeping those memories (or ghosts) alive for those we love, we are keeping their spirit, and our spirit, alive.

Last July a woman I had been playing word games with online for more than 10 years was suddenly admitted to a hospital. I had met her only once in person, a year or so after we had met online, as I happened to be traveling in her state. I was grateful that her family posted to her friends on Facebook about her illness. When she died a couple of weeks later I grieved as I would for any long time friend. I wrote to the administrators of one of the word game sites and they let her other players know. Now I am playing with one of them, keeping the memory of our mutual friend alive.

When I met Tom online through a social app, we connected because we both loved travelling. We shared stories and experiences and slowly developed a very deep friendship. This friendship last for 16 years. We wrote each other every day except when we knew that we might be unable to do so. It was September two days before I went on holidays with my family. I wrote Tom about the forthcoming plans, how and when I will connect and waited for his reply which did not come. I wrote twice more than I was off. There was a problem with the wi-fi in my hotel and I could not reach out to him until I returned home 10 days later. Instead of feeling angry that he has not written I became worried. There was no one I could ask about him. Finally, I decided to try and find family members of him on FB. I did find a granddaughter and there it was staring into my face. She wrote she lost her beloved grandfather suddenly. He was well and alive running about and then collapsed. I collapsed after reading this. It has been 4 years now and I still grieve deeply. My friends cannot understand it and I am unable to share my deep loss with anyone.

With loss we need "the love of others" and also gentle self acceptance that what we are enduring is profound. Spiritual and philosophical inquiry may deepen this understanding.

I'm a member of two cyber communities for people who have a chronic, progressive, terminal lung disease - pulmonary fibrosis. We both give and get. There is an exhilarating blend of information and ways to cope with challenges... and emotional support as well. I'm reminded of the quick and intense relationships that develop in the military in combat situations... and in cancer wards... any "pressurized" situation that brings people together in intense circumstances. The connections can be rapid and deeply affecting. And we have a lot of deaths. Grief is an ongoing issue. Just like some medical professionals find satisfaction in doing hospice work and others find they cannot manage the grief, so we have members who leave the group because the cybergrief is overwhelming. Many of us have to take "sabbaticals" to recharge. Oddly enough - as a person with a progressive, terminal condition, I find joy in working with "my people" online I know we will keep "leaving the stage" but in the meantime - we are quite a vibrant group. There is nothing like impending death to focus one's attention! And yes - one of the hardest parts if people who have not experienced real cyber community do not understand or respect cybergrief. This is evolving. As more people experience this, it will become mainstream. For now, I appreciate articles like this one that spread the word.

We should treat virtual friends as we would treat a friend we physically met because we know that they are real people too and not just a screenname and that our actions affect them similarly. In the same way, when a virtual friend dies, it is no different than hearing the news of a friend who died that you physically knew. The depth and intensity of the loss have more to do with the quality of the friendship cultivated, whether online or offline. I wonder whether those who casually dismiss such virtual friendships have ever experienced them in a positive way?

I've really grown socially from my online gaming communities - spending time with people I'd never cross paths with in "real life", learning to judge people solely by their actions, generosity, and humor, and being able to take risks inhabiting different aspects of myself. However most people I talk with in real life are surprised when I call these gamers my "friends" and my therapist described socializing online as "like eating fast food . . . just empty calories." So I was judgemental of myself and tried to step away. But last year when I went through a health crisis that sent me into a state of fear for months it was my online community that pulled me through. They're always available, right there in my living room, and they're always up for some fun to help me take my mind off the slings and arrows for awhile. I learned better how to value these friendships, as real as many I've found in "real life".