Prolong? I don't know, since I've never done it, but I imagine that sending a copy of the obituary as proof might be enough. I mean, compared to leaving it up indefinitely, it seems like contacting facebook could help forego continued agony.

I meant that in two ways. One, I've heard secondhand that it's a pain to get Facebook to take an account down, probably to avoid pranks. Two, it's almost like ... could it be that deleting their facebook sort of causes your loved one to die all over again? Sort of a trigger for renewed grief. I could see that.

In the situation I'm talking about, it's still up and people are still posting to it. This happened sometime in the summer of 2012, to put it into some context. To me, it seems like just knowing that I could visit a facebook page instead of having to get up and go to a grave to sit and remember a person and maybe chat with the headstone/marker seems like a very real kind of temptation that I don't care to indulge myself in.

It's interesting that you draw that parallel of "visiting the grave" virtually. On the flip side, maybe it's cathartic for people who live too far from the grave to mourn in person. Or maybe it's like when a loved celebrity dies and flowers and memorials begin to appear at their doorstep; adds a communal aspect to grief. Might help. I have no experience with that and I'm not particularly empathetic so this is just conjecture.