The subject of mortality has rarely been as present, yet simultaneously as indiscernible, as it has been over the past months. Like our work and personal lives, the way(s) we die and mourn have had to adapt to the measures issued to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. In its epicentres, funerals were not allowed, or if they were, only if they were held in retained circles. Final goodbyes by terminal patients to relatives were occasionally only possible via video call. Though the event of a pandemic might suggest grim and close deaths, these segregated and discreet departures in intensive care units of sealed off hospitals, made the disease less graspable and consequently, less frightening to some.

The come back in the public consciousness of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion[1] indicates a viewer's desire to understand and see for themselves how a life-threatening respiratory disease affects our bodies. Here again, the fictious virus rather discreetly terminates its victims. French writer Michel Houellebecq went as far as to complain in an open letter published on Radio France that 'this epidemic succeeded in the feat of being both distressing and boring.' Indeed, no haunting images of Covid-19 patients circulated in the media. This is quite unlike the dramatic photo of the dying HIV activist, David Kirby, surrounded by his family, which majorly contributed in raising awareness for the epidemic.

A banal virus, with little prestige related to obscure flu viruses, with poorly known conditions of survival, with unclear characteristics, sometimes benign, sometimes deadly, not even sexually transmissible: in short, a virus without qualities. This epidemic may have killed a few thousand people every day around the world, but it nevertheless produced the curious impression of being a non-event. […] It would be just as wrong to say that we have rediscovered tragedy, death, finitude, etc. The tendency for more than half a century now, well described by Philippe Ariès, has been to conceal death as much as possible; well, death has never been as discreet as in these last few weeks. People die alone in their hospital or nursing home rooms, they are immediately buried (or cremated? cremation is more in the spirit of the times), without inviting anyone, in secret. Dead without the slightest witness, the victims are summed up as a unit in the statistics of daily deaths, and the anguish that spreads through the population as the total increases have something strangely abstract about it.[2]

It is instead the video of an Italian military convoy said to carry the coffins of deceased Covid-19 patients out of Bergamo, that became a key image of this disease, and probably will also be one of the few ones. Its diffusion was an important element to convey the severity of the disease to the Italian population (and beyond), and sensibilise the measures being taken to retain it. This virus' evolution haunts us hourly and daily, mainly in the form of statistics. The pandemic brought death closer to us, but also transformed it into an inconspicuous graph.

Several media also dedicated articles on how Covid-19 raised awareness about our own mortality. Not least between millennials, who are said to increasingly engage and prepare their own death. Such preparations can make use of new start-up’s providing end-of-life services, which have already emerged over the last decade. The circumstances of our own death – assisted dying, euthanasia, organ donation – and the options available for disposing of bodies – biodegradable burial, cryonics, cremation diamonds – undeniably underwent and will still undergo diversification, and are an interesting subject of research. But let’s focus on the data and the virtual us that we are leaving behind.

As current mainstream platforms are not able to fully embrace the subject of death, new online end-of-life services have, in turn, appeared. At first sight, most of these platforms – BeRemembered, Memories, Afternote, Cake or SafeBeyond – offer services that seem to mimic social networks like Facebook, allowing the creation and storage of 'digital time capsules' along with timelines. Yet, they also enable the users to create farewell and future messages for their loved ones. Such type of messages activate at a certain date p.ex. a birthday or other kind of anniversaries – or for a certain event – p.ex. a wedding or graduation.

How can we prepare our digital footprint before they enter these online purgatories? Are we at the beginning of an era of digital necromancy? Will the digital let new forms of parasocial relationships emerge? Will this disrupt the morning process for those seeking closure? Or will social media, by enabling us to plan beyond death, contribute to making us understand that the latter is a part of life?