Online mourning and honouring answer to a larger need for communal support and ritualistic behaviour that the mere burial code does not offer. Life after the burial ceremony continues in cycles, where anniversaries mark the days when it is socially accepted to mourn and to honour. However, not all are able to attend or even create a burial service, if there is not a body to bury or the geographical distances do not allow attendance. A burial gives closure for the bereaved, and regardless of the religious beliefs of the mourner it usually follows a familiar ritual to accept the loss of a friend. In gaming communities, virtual burials or memorials that look like graves work as cenotaphs, tombs without bodies, symbols for lost relationships.

Since virtual memorials are only made of pixels and abstract ideas, created in the mind and displayed on a (computer) screen, they have also transformed the way people perceive physical objects. The belongings of the deceased often become imbued some kind of deeper meaning, and photographs are often especially meaningful for the mourner. In gaming worlds, screenshots and videos are cherished and used in the memorials for others to enjoy and remember. But it is not only the visual material that is preserved, as chat discussions, messages and other things the deceased player ‘had said’ online become meaningful objects that are often passed along to others. These virtual ‘objects’ become loaded with memories of the person and representatives of the personality, whether imagined (characters) or real (actual people).

In this article I examine the relationships and identites of a Second Life online role-playing group, which lost one of its member few years ago. The group both mourned and honored the role-playing identity of the deceased as well as the actual offline identity, the young girl who died.