Grieving on Facebook: How the site helps people

My mother, at 52, was pretty late in catching on to the whole Facebook thing. When she finally signed up a few months ago, she received a friend request from a high school classmate she hadn’t talked to in 30 years. He had read her brother’s obituary in the local paper and wanted to give his condolences. It was through this overture on Facebook that this man, who had once been a close family friend, came to learn that my mom’s parents had also recently passed away. He responded by explaining how he felt when his mother died and how he had struggled to recover from the loss. “I was so glad we got reconnected,” my mom said. “It brought me back to a place that was really happy and comfortable for me.”