MOURNING ON THE INTERNET FOR THAT DISTANT FUNERAL.

Byline: Deborah Solomon Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

The Internet has become so popular that people are literally dying to go online.

The next time someone you love passes away, you may not need to travel any farther than your PC to pay your respects. Within the next few months, a White Plains, N.Y., company will make it possible for the bereaved to attend funerals in cyberspace.

Rather than hassle with last-minute travel plans or take time off from work, Simplex Knowledge Co. has created the Virtual Funeral, a product that allows out-of-town mourners to attend a funeral via the Internet.

True, you won't be able to place a flower on the casket or get a whiff of that funeral parlor smell, but SKC thinks it has found a niche among cyber-savvy people with hectic schedules and a lot of ill-fated friends.

``Attendance at funerals is off 30 percent in the last 10 years,'' says Jack Martin, president of SKC and inventor of the Virtual Funeral. ``This is the perfect solution.''

It may sound eerie, but bidding farewell to the deceased in cyberspace had to happen sooner or later. The Internet already helps people find their true love, buy a house and locate long-lost relatives.

``Maybe it sounds morbid, but this will help alleviate the guilt people feel when they can't make it to the funeral,'' says Martin.

His company plans to install closed-circuit cameras at funeral parlors across the country. Every 30 seconds, the cameras will send real-time photo images to individual, private Web sites.

According to a promotional statement from the company, ``the mourners, the flowers, the coffin, and in the event of an open casket, the deceased, are all visible to the Internet viewer.'' Mourners need not worry about funeral crashers - anyone who wants to attend the virtual funeral will have to use a password.

Friends can even click on icons to send flowers, sympathy cards and fruit baskets to the family. On the bottom of the screen, cybermourners can chat live about the deceased.

``The transcript of the chat can be saved, and you can see who came and what they said,'' Martin explains. ``It will help those people who are excluded because of time, money or some other personal problem.''

Martin may be operating in the spirit of capitalism, but not everyone is enlivened by his idea. After the Virtual Funeral idea was posted by a reporter on a user group that deals with death and dying, several people responded with distaste.

``It makes a mockery of something that is intended to be beautiful and spiritual,'' said one message. Another wrote, ``Death is not something that should be packaged and sold.''

Despite the vitriol, Martin's idea doesn't have one foot in the grave. At a funeral directors' convention a few months ago, his product got an enthusiastic response.

``We got a strong reception from funeral homes. There are three or four we could sell it to right now,'' he says. He plans to start shopping Virtual Funeral to parlors nationwide in a few weeks. If the response is as positive as he expects, Martin hopes to take death on-line in a couple of months.

He even plans to rent out his contraption to families of the deceased, in the event that their funeral parlor of choice doesn't offer the service.

But Martin doesn't want people to get the wrong idea about him. He's not all gloom and doom.

If the Virtual Funeral product doesn't croak, Martin plans to sell a similar service for weddings (though he should probably can the coffin pictures). And he already offers a service that lets parents keep an eye on their children who are in day-care. His ``I See You'' product allows parents to monitor certain day-care centers over a private site on the Web.

``These products are for the living,'' says Martin. ``Weddings and funerals are both extremely stressful times. We're responding to people's needs.''

Now, Martin hopes, people will start responding to his.

For more information on any of these products, check out SKC's Web site at www.skc.com.

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Photo

Photo: Somber scenes like this will soon be available online with a cyber service that allows convenient long-range grief from the comfort of your home.