We’ve all seen them in our Facebook feeds. A fallen serviceman or police officer is being remembered by his or her family and friends, and those in the community are asked to share the post to honor that person's life.

Or someone fairly well known dies and their Facebook wall is flooded with emotional condolences and remembrances of the person and the life they lived.

Facebook has even begun offering family members a way to memorialize their loved ones' pages, which allows others to leave online memorials, such as photos, posts, and other shared memories. This memorialization also keeps the person's photos from appearing in the "People You May Know," ads, or birthday reminders.

Online memorials offer a virtual space for individual and collective grieving. These sites are common on various social media platforms, but are also offered by funeral homes and independent organizations. They create a broad-reaching, sometimes enduring outlet for expressions of grief by those unable to attend the wake or funeral, and allow for ongoing condolences after the funeral.

These condolences are legitimate expressions of grieving or mourning, and have realistic value, and as such, can have tremendous value for those affected by the death of someone meaningful to them. For many people, this may be helpful as they grieve a celebrity who played an important role in their lives, such as when David Bowie or Prince died this year.

Online memorials, flowers, and cards of condolence are valuable ways for grievers to communicate the unrealized hope of some day meeting and spending time with that celebrity they so admired.

Having done many of those things, they sometimes later realize it wasn’t enough for them. In that case, we suggest they dig deeper using the Grief Recovery Method and/or Grief Recovery Handbook to help them discover what other communications are still incomplete for them.