The Bell Tolls is an online service that can notify people by email that a person has died. By subscribing to the Bell Tolls service, individuals can import/add email addresses to receive notification, create customize email messages to their selected recipients, upload a pictures, create an obituary, etc.
The Notification Service
The notification services work in two ways. Individuals can link their accounts to other people’s accounts to allow select individuals to declare their death at the Bell Tolls website. These people are called Trusted Souls. The second method in which the notification service works is that the individual can print instructions on how to declare their death at the Bell Tolls and provide it to their survivors. One of their survivors would then follow the instructions to ensure email notifications get sent.
The Name: The Bell Tolls
The Bell Tolls is a metaphor describing that deaths calls everyone at some point. It is based on this poem:
For Whom The Bell Tolls by John Donne
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…”
