The demise of a close, aged relations can frequently meant a staid week end or two going by old things, classification by photographs, donating old clothing to charity.
But in an age when so sufficient of the lives are online, small considered has been since to how you hoop a person's digital world when they are no longer with us.
By the time the "Facebook generation" turn old and grey, their entire lives might be expansion out with a million updates on Twitter, thousands of photos on Flickr, hours and hours of video on YouTube and may be their own website too.
As a person dies, should their online participation end too? What should come about to all that personal information?
Richard Banks believes he might have the solution. He is an communication planner for Microsoft and his team, formed in Cambridge, have been working on the idea of digital memories - and how, even if a person is no longer with us, their digital self can still be enjoyed.
He told BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind about how the demise of his grandfather couple of years ago desirous him to consider the future of bereavement.
"After he transfered away, I became the target of a container full of photos of his life.
"Inside there was about 200 shots of not similar durations of his life, all old equivalent term photos, printed out, stored divided in envelopes.
"It got me considering about what the disparity would be, now, with my detailed practices, and the type of things I might leave at the back for my own children."
He has combined a few gadgets that run exclusively from any P.C. or other internet device, instead behaving similar to a normal box of cinema and memories.
Rather than earthy photos, however, the cinema in this device are displayed around an interactive touchscreen.
"If I hold one of those photos at any point, then I obtain taken to a timeline," explained Mr Banks.
"What appears then is a entire operation of photos expansion over time.
"Suddenly it's a way of considering can you beginning to take value of the digital qualities of some of this content, so that you can beginning to make objects that may be act for a person's life, or may be give a clarity of their evolution over time, or where they outlayed time at not similar points in their life."
Mr Banks hopes that his gadgets would meant digital memories would far endure the technology they were combined on - sufficient similar to the old photographs in his grandfather's suitcase.
This charge is done simpler by the stepping up dependence on "the cloud" to horde the data - rsther than than earthy storage such as hard drives for floppy disks.
"I think you lend towards to consider the earthy stipulations of digital things by objects similar to floppy discs and DVDs and CDs that we've stored the calm on.
"I think obviously some of those earthy stipulations are going to go divided as you beginning to store more and more calm online. We'll put them in places and they'll flattering sufficient only stay there."
This, however, offers up other issue. Will there be simply as well sufficient data? If these systems save every tongue online, the container of 200 changed cinema could unexpectedly turn a immeasurable gathering of meaningless data.
"I think that clarity of quantity, and tremendous figures of content, is a tougher thing to handle," says Mr Banks.
"I think there are ways to attend to that computationally - getting a clarity of when photos were taken or who might be in the photos and those kinds of things."
Our online personas can offer a frank look back at a persons' life giving glimpses in to personalities and friendships. But with it comes a chance of pity as well much.
Abigail Sellen is moreover segment of the group working on the project. She says that you may, whilst we're still alive, have to consider what could be left at the back when you pass away.
"A lot of those materials might in fact be considerably sensitive or personal.
"So if you leave all of that things at the back to somebody that you caring about, is that person going to be cozy going by all of it?"
Ms Sellen says that anticipating secrets left at the back by a defunct relations is nothing new, but e-mail repository and other data could be misinterpreted.
"In the past you might have disturbed about earthy admire letters and forthcoming opposite those when you're going by your grandfather's things and being repelled by it.
"At smallest in that box you know that they kept them for a reason and may be it was critical to them."
In future, it might be that as you write the wills and may be even erupt the secret letters, you might have to moreover outlay time cleaning out the online lives, ready to be put on uncover to those closest to us.
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