A Galaxy Of Digital Remains
It feels strange to think about someone reading this if I were dead. Who would that person be?
They would be stepping into a kind of chaotic galaxy of writing: notes scattered across Obsidian, Word, and whatever other tools I used. Things I published online. Things I never did. The way I wrote them. The tone, the hesitations, the repetitions.
I do not think I have ever really considered this before. Probably because I would not be there to witness any reaction. And yet, if someone ever reads this, I would like them to write something back. Even a few thoughts. Even confusion.
When someone dies, what happens to the data they leave behind on their computer? Do people go through it, or do they avoid it out of respect for privacy? Should they?
Perhaps there is value in doing so. Not out of curiosity, but as a way of thinking about them. As a form of quiet honor. It feels wasteful that a life’s worth of traces can simply be deleted or never processed into anything meaningful.
Sometimes I imagine a machine that could scan everything and translate it into a form that is actually readable. Or maybe into a single, massive image — something you could zoom into endlessly, like a map of a mind.
If someone chooses to erase everything deliberately — especially someone important to me, especially her — I feel only sadness. If that is not her trace in the world, then what is? Where do her memories live? Are they scattered across other people, or nowhere at all?
It is unbearably sad to think that a life could simply vanish, unassembled, unread, and forgotten.
Published in Women Write
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