A befuddled ponderance

In an era of instant gratification, there seem to be a lot of things that remain enshrouded in mystery.  Perhaps I am being morbid, but the interface of death and information is something of incredible interest to me of late.  Now undoubtedly, this is in part - if not almost entirely - drudged up by the recent passing of my father; it is fueled without question by the reception of news that my mother was involved in a car accident this morning.

To me, there exists a quandary regarding the triviality of information so easily disseminated.  I can tweet about the egg white omelet I had for breakfast, instantly allow anyone in the world who so chooses to partake of this fact.  But something that truly matters - a loved one in need being the example that springs to mind - can remain unknown for indiscriminate periods of time.  I found out that my father had had a heart attack because I was calling my mother to tell her about a new winter coat I had just purchased.  Such a life changing piece of news was articulated as it was due to mere chance - it seems a perversion.

In addition to his volunteer activities (he served as a court appointed special advocate and spent time entertaining children being evaluated for signs of abuse), my father had an active presence in the online world.  As was always his custom, he made a distinct effort to stay hip to the times so that he could better connect with those important to him, including his four daughters who were spread out over three states.  He played World of Warcraft - a game to which I introduced him to help whittle away some of his newly acquired time after he retired - and excelled at this.  But this profound online presence now creates a startling dilemma:

What do we do with a virtual entity when the one to whom it belongs is really dead?

In looking into these matters, I have a few things which I will share here for future knowledge, dear readers:

-Facebook does provide the option for family members to "memorialize" the account of a deceased relative.  This ensures that the account is not toyed with post-mortem, but is allowed to remain as a testament to its previous owner.  For the immediate family members, it appears that there is an option to remove the account from the world wide web altogether; I shied away from this as it seemed somewhat contradictory to my father's technological nature.

-World of Warcraft will allow for the account of a deceased player to be transferred over to a member of the immediate family.  The family member will then be able to log on as one of the deceased's characters to spread the news of the player's demise.  This is something toward which I have been working for a while, as in such a game, one is likely to interact with the same group of people daily, even coming to be an integral portion of the game for other players.  It is important to me that his fellow gamers not feel as if he had abandoned them or become unexpectedly undependable.  However, this requires proof of death and so this remains unchecked on the 'to-do' list as I await a copy of the death certificate.

As strange as it may seem, all of our technology is still somewhat in its infancy.  As it reaches adolescence, issues such as these begin to be addressed.  But what is the best policy?  How should we proceed?  In a virtual world where we can feign to be anything, how do we address issues of such gravity?

While I lack answers, I think these are worthwhile questions to begin considering.  Perhaps in the future, wills will detail the division of all assets, in addition to how to handle our online gremlins.  Only time will tell.