In the days after her big brother's death, Melissa Bostic took her energy and put it where teenagers often do. She logged onto MySpace. Anthony had started an account but done nothing with it. There were no pictures and no self-evaluations in the about-me section. So she figured out his password (the third baseman had chosen "baseball") and posted photos. She filled in the blanks, describing her brother as loving and ambitious, as a role model and a guy with an "awesome smile."

Anthony died in a car accident on March 4, 2006, along with three of his friends. He was 17 and returning to Raleigh after attending a Wakefield High School basketball game in Greenville.

In the time since, more than 360 people have linked their profiles to his through the Internet social-networking site. In the comment section, friends wish Anthony a happy Valentine's Day. They tell him about school and their homecoming dresses, as well as their visits to the mausoleum. The site has become a repository of emotions.

For some, mourning is a particularly private affair. For the Bostic family, there is comfort in making some of it more public. It's an instinct others have showed. By creating a place where people can come together, Melissa has built a mini version of the kind of community that embraced, for instance, Joan Didion's best-seller, "The Year of Magical Thinking," which she wrote about grieving her husband's death.

"It's nice that so many people can see his picture," says Ron Bostic, Anthony and Melissa's father. "The whole world can know who he is, if they want to. I think that's great."

Writers aid others

Readers the world over know of C.S. Lewis, author of "The Chronicles of Narnia." They know of his wife in large part because he wrote a book, "A Grief Observed," after she died of cancer. Published in the early 60s, it has become a grief-memoir classic.

More recently, Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" was a critical and commercial success. Vanessa Redgrave will star later this spring in a one-woman Broadway show based on the book. Author Calvin Trillin's newest book, "About Alice," a kind of extended love letter to his late wife, was recently released to enthusiastic reviews.

In making grief public, mourners can help to make a difference in the lives of others, says Shelley Colvin, manager of Traces and Reflections Family Grief Center, the bereavement program at Hospice of Wake County. A book can help build a legacy. Money collected at a fundraiser in remembrance of a loved one might help others in similar situations.

So the public expression of grief helps not only family and friends, but also people who never knew the deceased.

"Everybody's story is very unique," Colvin says, "but when they see a public expression, it brings back losses in their past and touches that place in their heart."

Making connections

Melissa routinely receives friend requests on MySpace from people just like her, folks who are maintaining sites for loved ones. So does Jennifer George, who keeps a site in memory of her brother, Steven George, who died in the same accident.

With its public forum, MySpace serves as a place where people from all corners of her brother's life can come and communicate. "I never knew how many lives he touched," Jennifer says.

MySpace also has helped create a legacy for Anthony, helping to share him with people he never met, Melissa says.

Closer to home, it has been difficult for some to use the site. Mom Debbie Bostic has looked briefly, but has avoided in-depth readings.

"I will eventually," she says. "Now it's just too hard."

Both Debbie and Ron said they admire Melissa for all the work she has done. And as time passes, and they become more comfortable with the idea of reading the remembrances of Anthony's friends, they will appreciate even more that they were captured.

These kids are growing up, Ron says. A lot of Anthony's friends have moved on to college. In 10 years, these stories will be more difficult to come by.

MySpace, he says, "brings it close enough that we can hang onto it."