Endless me
On the Web, it seems I can live virtually forever. That won’t get old, will it?
I try to be a good person. Really, I do. I pick up litter, hold the door for strangers, and never leave my grocery carriage in the middle of the parking lot. Bark less, wag more -- that’s the bumper sticker I admire.
But I am learning that there is a limit to my geniality, and it’s my website. Here’s notice: None of you are getting my domain name, even after I’m dead.
I’m sorry. It’s dreadfully selfish of me, I know. There are, according to howmanyofme.com, 1,035 other Jennifer Grahams in these United States, and presumably more than a few of them would like the website that bears our common name. But I got it first (Hah!), and it will forever remain in the grip of my cold, dead hands. All I have to do is arrange for someone to manage my cyber afterlife when I die.
The matter of my demise is on my mind not because it’s tax season but because of a new crop of businesses vying for my money and attention. There are Mywebwill, Legacylocker, and Deathswitch, all promising to safeguard my digital passwords and relay them to my appointed representatives when I expire. Additionally, they will -- for a one-time or monthly fee -- notify my cyberfriends of my passing, shut down my e-mail accounts, and obey my orders regarding the fate of my Facebook page, PayPal balance, iTunes credits, and
I could, I suppose, write all this stuff down on a sheet of paper and ask one of my kids to do it, but do I really want them to know how much of their inheritance I wasted buying Steve Prefontaine memorabilia? Absolutely not. And I’ll purchase the services of strangers before I give my mother easy access to my AOL browsing history, particularly when I’m not around to explain it. (George Clooney and underwear? It was research, I swear.)
So how will these impassionate strangers know when I’m dead? Deathswitch.com sends e-mails (“Please click here to demonstrate that you are still alive!”) to which you must reply to confirm that you’re still with us. You set the frequency of the prompts according to “what fits best for your lifestyle” -- more often, I guess, if you’re a sky diver or drive regularly on Route 9. If you don’t answer for a while, the system “deduces that you are dead” and generates e-mail to your designated recipients.
“The people in your life will feel better knowing that they can expect an e-mail from you after you’re gone,” it says on the Deathswitch site. Maybe, maybe not. One of the recommended uses for the site is “to get in the last word in an argument.” It’s debatable how much good will a 1,000-word post-mortem “So there!” will generate. Nil nisi bonum, indeed.
Death has always been a complicated business, with a long list of unpleasant quandaries to consider: Who gets the jewelry, who gets the silver, whither goes my liver? Burial or cremation, ground or vault, heaven or hell? But nowadays, once all that’s decided, ever more head-scratching dilemmas await: Does the world really need perpetual access to my YouTube offerings or my
Directing one’s cyber second act seems not so much good planning as being stuck in Stage Three of the Kubler-Ross model: bargaining. OK, maybe I won’t be breathing exactly, but as long as my crops are harvested in FarmVille and my blog is occasionally updated and my best friend gets an e-card from me on her birthday, then I’m not really dead. Right?
The late American humorist Elbert Hubbard once defined death as “to stop sinning suddenly.” He drowned on the Lusitania, long before the Internet was born. Now, via the magic of technology, we can continue to sin even after we’ve passed through the Pearly Gates. Let’s hope no one can throw you out when, 400 years hence, an incendiary blog posting results in a Jim Jones-like mass murder/suicide. Or when St. Peter discovers that you’re cybersquatting on a domain name centuries after you’ve passed. It’s probably a sore spot for him.
Stpeter.com, Stpeter.net, and Stpeter.org -- they’re all taken.
Jennifer Graham is a writer and editor in the suburbs of Boston. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. 
